Acorn Place: August 8-9 Flash Floods: Freeville

We had quite a bit of rain in Freeville and across the area on Thursday night into Friday. There was some major flash flooding reported, including evacuations about 10 minutes up the road in the Cortland area. My rain gage picked up 3.21" on Thursday and 1.07" today (Friday)...and about 4" of that fell in a 24-hour span. That's by far the most it's rained since I moved here.

Water ponded in every depression, large and small.

Normally, there are three or four more steps leading to the dock in the photo below.

I carefully made my way down by the water's edge and took some shots of the swollen creek:

This is as high as I've seen the water since I moved here.

What is normally a four-foot back was full of water:

And a house just outside the Village of Freeville, normally surrounded by a large yard, was kept high and dry today, but not by much.

Areas that are normally dry were covered with water. The next few photos show Fall Creek swollen near the Etna nature preserve, about 2.5 miles south of Freeville.

Normally well away from the road, the creek was swollen to within a few feet of Route 366.

From there, I drove around Ithaca, documenting the high water and evidence of flash flooding all afternoon. When I got back to the Freeville, I stopped in a parking lot near Sherbore Drive, just south of town, for a few photos.

Mill Street in Freeville was closed due to flooding of Fall Creek.

Here are a couple of shots looking from the vicinity of Mill Street along Fall Creek back towards my dock.

The "Road Flooded" sign was still in place, but by late afternoon, the road had dried out.

After all that rain, there was plenty of water in places that are normally dry.

What are normally just muddy marshes became watery swamps.

I'm afraid the mosquitoes will love all that standing water in the coming days...

This is the area where I'm guessing the road was most severely flooded: just to the Freeville side of the one-lane bridge over Fall Creek. The water was still within a foot or two of the road in places.

Looking from the one-lane bridge out over Fall Creek:

Then, I paid a visit to my dock with yardstick in hand to measure just how high the creek had risen.

Another step (or two) and the dock were still covered by water:

Was the dock down there? And if so, how far down?

Just about 15 inches, it turns out. So the creek had risen nearly two feet in about a day.

The water level was slowly falling from earlier in the day, but the creek will surely be running high for a few more days as all that water slowly drains.