8/31/2023 0 Comments Ellicott city flood postPhoto: Jerry Jackson, permission from Baltimore Sun Media. Main Street in Ellicott City is seen from above the day after a flash flood devastated the historic city on the Patapsco River. Rather than workaday folk gathering sundries on Main Street, droves of tourists and preservation enthusiasts now stroll the charming byway to patronize boutique shops and cafés. It was designated a National Historical Landmark in 1968, and the Main Street area, which retains over 200 historic buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.īut while much has stayed the same, much has also changed since Ellicott Mills’ 19th-century heyday. Today, Wilkins Rogers Mills still processes flours and cornmeal on the old site, and the B&O rail station at Ellicott City is the oldest surviving rail station in the United States. Housing and shops quickly sprang up along the winding street to service residents and visitors. The mill town flourished in the 1800s and was the first stop on the Baltimore and Ohio Main Line railroad (the first railroad in the United States) beginning in 1831. All that water power made it the perfect place to build a mill town-as brothers Jonathan and George Ellicott did beginning in 1772. For this reason alone, the region is prone to flooding.In the aftermath of two “1000-year” floods in three years, can experts, officials, and residents agree on a way to prevent the next big one while preserving this historic town?Įllicott City, Maryland, rests in a steep, narrow valley at the confluence of the Tiber River, its smaller unnamed tributaries, and the much larger Patapsco River. It sits near the Patapsco river and in a valley. Ellicott City, Maryland has flooded 15 or so times in the past couple of centuries. Neil Debbage, who was recently hired to join the Faculty at University of Texas-San Antonio, confirmed that urban development also affects streamflow. New research published in Water Resources Research by Dr. It reduces infiltration and increases the amount of water runoff into streams. However, urbanization modifies the water cycle. In the natural landscape, water infiltrates into the soil. Cityscapes tend to have lots of parking lots, paved roads, and surfaces that water does not seep into. The Baltimore region, like many others, is becoming more urbanized. This leads me to the next aspect of the water cycle lesson. Over the span of a few hours 6 to 12 inches of rainfall fell in the Ellicott City, Maryland region.Ĭlimatological Precipitable Water range for 00Z on May 28th at Washington-Baltomore area NWS office. Jeff Halverson writes in Capital Weather Gang that "precipitable (water) value was nearly record-breaking for this region, for May 27." With values near 2 inches, it is clear from the climatological PW analysis below that this was an anomalous event. So what is Precipitable Water? It is defined by the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology as, "the total atmospheric water vapor contained in a vertical column of unit cross-sectional area extending between any two specified levels, commonly expressed in terms of the height to which that water substance would stand if completely condensed and collected in a vessel of the same unit cross section." Preliminary analyses suggest that the 2018 Ellicott City flooding was also associated with extremely high moisture rates. She also found that in all 40 flood cases examined in the study, the PW values exceeded 150% of climatological mean values. A key finding was that urban flood events are often associated with extremely high Precipitable Water (PW) and often exceed the 99th percentile of the dataset.
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