Not much is running right now, but...

When it rains, it's sometimes a struggle to figure out what's running.

The DitchBitch, Mark Cumnock, has been working on a boaters website for the Waldens Ridge area near Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the process, he's put together a pretty good tutorial on how to figure out what's running and where.

While his site is dedicated to the Walden Ridge area, we should be able to adapt much of his process to our own area(or other areas).

[www.waldensridgewhitewater.com]

Part of the trick is to understand where the drainages are for the runs we want to do. For instance, an inch of rain in Frankfort doesn't necessarily mean that the Elkhorn or Benson will rise, but, an inch of rain in Lexington roughly translates into a foot of water in the Elkhorn(give or take a foot) or an inch of rain in the area between Frankfort and Shelbyville may get the Benson going.

Here's a good start to figuring out where the drainages are...

[eppcmaps.ky.gov]

[www.uky.edu]

[www.water.ky.gov]

Hurricane season is upon us.

Think rain.

There are actually formulas that you can use to predict the cfs downstream given land usage, area of watershed, soil condition (dry/wet), Type of soils, type of rain (type II rain events in this area), and time of year (to estimate tree and grass slurpage). It's actually not that complicated and something could be put together to make it very user friendly.

It could be put together so that all you would have to enter would be the amount of rain

Good links Dale

In Anticipation of Precipitation
WaVeY

Wavey...

in calculating area of watershed, I'm assuming you just use a topo and some string and lay out the area in between all the peaks? Once the gradient slows to where its a plateau of sorts how much of that flat-ish land is accounted for in the watershed area?
also, do those formulas account for farm ponds that presumably catch run off? I assume those things have to be at a certain height before water comes out.

bubba.

As far as the areas goes....autocad is generally the easiest way. Some of the watershed areas have already been calculated and are most likely found in some of the links that Dale provided.

All of the area is accounted for within the watershed area but the time of concentration within the watershed is based upon how long it would take the furthest droplet of rain to reach the desired location.

As far as the farm ponds go....yes there is a way to account for them......for instance you can treat them as reservoirs with spillways.....but then you begin to bring in other complex parameter(s) into the equation. You would need the size of the reservoir (pond) as well as the its watershed area and current elevation of the water level..........they DEFINITELY play a role in some of the streams around here but it may be easier to take that into consideration rather than trying to input that data into a program.

In Anticipation of Precipitation
WaVeY