Rain, snowmelt bring flooding to Northeast

AccuWeather

AccuWeather River Expert Alex Sosnowski discusses the Northeast flood threat.

Transcript

00:00Joining me right now is our flooding expert Alex Cisnowski and you know Alex

00:04I know as soon as we start seeing these high snow totals across New England

00:09I know your antennas went up for the possibility of flooding now

00:13We do have flood watches out here today across southwestern, New York

00:18You can see them from Watertown toward the Buffalo area because of the rain the snow melt and the rising temperatures

00:28Yeah, interestingly there and a good chunk of that

00:30There's not a huge amount of snow on the ground until you get over toward Watertown

00:34And this map shows that you can see where the heaviest

00:37Bands of snow that are on the ground there and generally one to three feet of snow is on the ground here in that

00:43Blue shading there and you get into some heavier amounts there where you have the purples

00:47But the key is within that snow cover. It's not about the snow

00:51It's the amount of water that's locked up in that and there's anywhere from one to six inches of water locked up in that

00:57Snow right now, and that's why we get concerned anytime. We have a warm rainstorm coming in like we do right now

01:04Yeah, and you know what let's let's talk about this really quickly Alex temperatures today all the way up in the Burlington in the 50s

01:12So that means into the higher terrain. We're probably going to end up around 40 degrees and then the rain

01:19As far as northern New England is concerned do you think at least with this event?

01:25The snow is going to be able to absorb a lot of that a lot of that rain coming

01:30I think it's going to absorb some of it

01:32You also have to look at the temperature of the snow cover when the snow cover is like in the 20s and teens

01:37I think which some of that is

01:40It it's got a warm the rain has to warm up the snow cover first before it can melt it

01:45When it when it's cold like that it tends to absorb when that snow cover gets up close to the freezing mark

01:51And that's when you have the risk of the snow liquefying and I think you will see some of that in the lower intermediate elevations

01:58I

01:59Think a lot of this rain is going to be absorbed

02:02by the snow cover, but not everywhere and

02:06I think you're going to get a significant runoff into the streams and rivers with this thing as it progresses

02:12Are we going to get a flooding disaster a widespread flooding disaster say like we had in 1996 when we have the rapid meltdown

02:18No, I don't think so

02:20But I think you're going to get some flooding problems there and probably you're going to see more rises than what's being reflected on the

02:27the river gauge forecasts right now

02:30Alex is this just

02:32Now with the rain coming into the snowpack

02:35It's going to absorb it that could delay the problem as we move forward here

02:40My concern is next week. It looks as though it's going to be warming up Wednesday Thursday now

02:45A lot of the warmth is off to the south

02:46But every time we get a rapid warm-up is this going to be a concern about flooding in in northern New England until this snow

02:54Goes away

02:55Yeah

02:56Until you melt all the snow or most of the snow cover

02:59You're that snow cover is going to grab a hold of that water and then that's got to be released later on now

03:04Hopefully that warm up we won't have any big rains with it and the snow will be able to gradually melt

03:09That's that's the best-case scenario that alone can still produce some high water on the streams and rivers, but not like a cat a cataclysmic

03:17Flooding event now the wild card and all this which really haven't covered here too much yet is is the potential for ice jams?

03:24If you live along a stream or a river and it's frozen over and it's got a lot of ice on it

03:29There's a risk here with this melting that's going on with a storm

03:33You're gonna get the risk of some ice jams with this thing and that's a wild card

03:39Even a well-behaved stream of river thus far with this winter that can turn into a problem

03:44So there is that risk and any of the rivers where there's where they're still frozen or you have a significant amount of ice on?

03:50and with this current storm

03:52Accuweather flooding expert Alex is now to get Alex again. Thanks for joining us here on

03:57Accuweather early nobody knows flooding better than Alex not even me

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