2018 Migration Count Summary: Rainout

If you were a regular visitor to this website during the autumn of 2017, you will recall the proliferation of posts detailing the bird migration at Conewago Falls during the season.  The lookout site among the Pothole Rocks remained high and dry for most of the count’s duration. 

In the fall of 2018, those lookout rocks were never to be seen. There was to be no safe perch for a would-be observer. There was no attempt to conduct a tally of passing migrants. If you live in the lower Susquehanna River drainage basin, you know why—rain—record setting rain.

Annual precipitation during 2018 as indicated by radar.  Note the extensive areas in pink.  They received in excess of 70 inches of precipitation during 2018, much of it during the second half of the year.  (NOAA/National Weather Service image)
Average annual rainfall.  Most of the lower Susquehanna drainage basin receives an average of just over 40 inches of rain each year.  (NOAA/National Weather Service image)
Departure from normal annual precipitation totals.  Note the extensive areas of greater than 20 inches of precipitation above normal (pink).  Severe flooding occurred on many streams during numerous events throughout the second half of 2018.  Note the closer to normal totals in central New York in the upper Susquehanna watershed.  The lesser amounts of rain there and the localized pattern of the flooding events in Pennsylvania prevented the main stem of the lower Susquehanna from experiencing catastrophic high water in 2018.  (NOAA/National Weather Service image)   
Though there has been no severe flooding, frequent rain events in the Susquehanna watershed have maintained persistently high river levels in Conewago Falls.  Pothole Rocks seen here on December 9 during an ebb in the flow were soon inundated again as rains fell in the Susquehanna basin upstream. 
Of course, each time the river receded it left behind a fresh pile of plastic garbage.  What didn’t end up on the shoreline found its way to Chesapeake Bay…then on to the Atlantic.  Is that your cooler?