Gunpowder Flooding

Well, it’s rained here in MD.  A lot.  Like nearly 5 inches in the past day!  With 5 inches of rain, the flooding has been pretty nuts.  I took a drive this afternoon/evening to see just how big the Gunpowder was, and hot damn, it’s enormous!!

UPDATE: If you’re interested in the flooding situation, I’ve posted a video from some of the river accesses from the day after these pictures were shot.  And trust me, there’s still an impressive amount of water in the river.  Check it out here.

First, I headed towards the Falls road access.  Along Evna road, it was clear that this little brook had been raging much stronger not long before I’d been there.

Based on this log, the waters were at least a good foot higher.

Lots of mud was left on the road.

Even as the water was clearly lower than it had been, it was still running high and dirty.

Already impressed, I continued down towards the Falls Rd. bridge.  As I approached the bridge, my jaw dropped.

Looking upstream from the bridge.

And downstream along the trail.

There are supposed to be a bunch of rocks there…

The trail was totally flooded out.  Wow.

A final look downstream from the Falls Rd bridge.  This is unbelievable.

I wanted to check out Masemore, one of my more frequented accesses to the river and trails.  However I didn’t want to drive back out along Falls and Evna roads, so I took the back way.

I thought I’d be able to make it across the bridge…  Guess not.

I thought that there was a parking lot here.

And a foot bridge here… Wow.

The river fully co-opted the parking lot for its own purposes.

And finally, looking upstream from the Masemore road bridge.  I don’t even recognize the river, jeez…

Since I didn’t really feel like testing the capabilities of the car in the 12-15+ inches of water on the road, I turned around and headed up to check out the dam.  I’d heard from a few folks that it was quite the site.

Yup, quite the site indeed.  So much water flowing over.

That’s a tremendous amount of water!

It’s scary, really.

Already thoroughly amazed by what I’d seen, I wanted to check out one more spot: the access at Big Falls road.  Although I don’t fish here too often, I use the trails here a lot.

Guess I won’t be parking, let alone hiking here today.

The water was barely making it under the bridge.  Normally, there is about 10 feet (give or take) of clearance between the water and the bridge.  Wow.

Yup, that’s a whole lot of water.

A final look upstream from the Big Falls bridge.  Just as the view up from Masemore road, this is totally unrecognizable.

What I’ve seen today has been simply stunning.  What’s worse is knowing that it’s supposed to rain another 1-3″ overnight and seemingly continue raining again tomorrow.  If you’re out and about the rivers, stay safe – the power of water is simply stunning.