Shellpot Creek rises after yesterday's torrential downpours

Yesterday's rain rapidly filled Shellpot creek in the morning.  Here is a picture.

It's back to normal now, but it is always exciting to see and hear it.

Saving my planted too early plants with an improvised cold frame

As a person who actually calculated the last frost dates (90 percentile) for Wilmington from the available data you would think I would know better. The above graph is the temperatures near my house for the past several days. Blue is below freezing, the dips to 25F were especially concerning to me and my poor plants. I knew ahead of time that temperatures would dip below freezing, but I now had lettuce, Brussels sprouts and strawberries newly planted and I wasn't sure they would be able to handle it.

I just started with just bottles with the tops or bottoms cut off to cover the plants I could and a black plastic bag for the row of lettuce.

Bottomless seltzer bottles just fit over the Brussels sprouts.

Topless jugs, a bottomless milk jug and a bucket serve to cover the new strawberry plants.

For the lettuce plants I improvised a cold frame from a plastic bag, duct tape and six dry wire hangers saved from the dry cleaning.

Linus helped me lay out a piece of black plastic a little longer than the row of lettuce. I just used a heavy duty 55 gallon garbage bag that I slit up both ends to make a double long piece of plastic.

Leftover hangers from the dry cleaning will provide a high enough support in the middle to be taller than these very short plants. I started by bending the tops of the hangers flat so that I could duct tape them to the plastic in the middle. I made sure that I had enough plastic on either side so that when I invert it and cover the plants, I can put some wood on the plastic to seal the end and keep it from blowing away.

I used four hangers, two on each end that will also be the sides and two dividing the middle space to provide support along the length. After I taped in the four hangers, I took two more hangers, unwound them and bent then into straight pieces and then duct taped them to the middle of the plastic to provide support to the spine of the cold frame.

Starting at the hanger on the end, I then taped the bottom of the hanger to the plastic to form the side of the cold frame, be sure that you have enough plastic at the end to cover the side and have a flap that you can put a piece of wood on to keep the cold frame in place when it is completed. Finally the frame is becoming more three-dimensional. Do the same to the hanger at the other end.

Next tape the sides of the wire hanger to the plastic for the two hangers in the middle. This will now make the cold frame into an upside down diagonal structure. Do this with both hangers.

I made sure that the hangers were taped well and that the straightened spine hanger wire was also taped well. Above is the completed cold frame, before it was inverted onto the plants.

The cold frame in place. I did use two sticks in the ground between the end hangers and the middle ones in order to give the spine extra support. Gently make sure the sticks line up with the duct taped spine so they don't poke through. The plastic overlapped at the edges gives a spot to put some wood down to seal the frame against the ground to keep some heat in and freezing temperatures out or at least moderated. They also keep it from blowing away.

Here is an angled shot to show the three dimensional structure a little more prominently.

I would estimate that I spent almost nothing but my less than an hour of time on this, since the ingredients were left over from other projects or free with other things.

So far my plants have survived the 4 or so days of deep freeze so the frame and the bottles seem to be working. I was finally able to begin the retirement of the device since last night's temperatures stayed above freezing, and what we have for the next few days is rain not freezing or frost.

For a detailed plan of the above project with measurements and a list of materials ... you will need to forget that you aren't watching This Old House or the New Yankee Workshop.

Snow breaking my Dr. Seuss Juniper

I thought that we wouldn't have a repeat of last year's heavy snow which broke many limbs on several holly bushes and a juniper tree, all of which eventually got cut down and went into the fire.

This year the snow is breaking the other juniper.

That limb on the ground used to be attached at the top and point straight up. It seems to have taken out to other limbs on its way down.

A closeup of the damage shows the broken top, another limb missing halfway down, and another hanging on by a piece of bark.

You can see how the snow is bowing the limbs down to the roof.


A view from the front.

Snow pictures of the day with all precipitation types

There has been a lot of complaint that the weather forecasters missed the call on this recent storm. It started yesterday when we awoke to 4 inches of snow that was twice what anybody expected and was still snowing when we all thought it would turn to rain.

We had in sequence - snow, cloudy skies, rain, ice pellets and lots of snow again. My pictures begin in the middle with the measurement of last night's snow, which was the second wave. About 7.5 inches.

Linus confirmed my measurement later in the shoveling. You can see my little meteorologist at work.

Then I got crazed with power after I finished shovelling the driveway. "

Look on my mighty snowpile ye snowflakes and despair. Fear my mighty shovel of power."

This has happened before.


Here is the pillowy snow covered rocks on Shellpot Creek.


The required waterfall picture.


And a closeup of the water flowing. The creek has actually risen above the earlier level where it froze so the water is flowing over ice stuck to the rocks.


A closeup of the water at the base of the waterfall.

Overflowing Shellpot Creek video and photos from todays monsoon

For the first time since we have lived in this house, Shellpot Creek lept its banks and flooded portions of the backyard.

The waterfall is an almost flat raging, rushing torrent.

A view of the flooded backyard from an upstairs window.

Just as dramatic was that it couldn't drain fast enough in front of the house.


The creek flows from the cul-de-sac...

...down the street.

Technically, for a short period this afternoon, our house was on an island in the middle of Shellpot creek as the creek flowed down Stoney Creek Lane in front of the house and joined the main branch further upstream, even as it flooded from its usual location in the back of the house.

Here is a video showing the creek first beginning to leave its banks.



Here is a video showing the height of the flooding of the backyard.



There was really no damage except some lost mulch that had just been put down, perhaps some plants were swept away and the regular creek junk left in our yard instead of high in the creek bed. You can see the creek is so high that the waves from the creek just crash across the yard. I also watched as large logs and debris from the creek floated through my yard and under the fence to the neighbors (and hopefully back to the creek so they don't have to deal with it).

It was a dramatic flooding event, but the house suffered no damage whatsoever since it sits high on the lot.

UPDATE: Charts from the the USGS stream gage on Shellpot Creek. This gage is downstream from my house, but since the water at my house, plus some more goes through the gage, it is a useful, official measurement of the creek flow.

The discharge in cubic feet per second. You can see July 13th's morning rain, July 14th's morning rain, and the high peak of the flood recorded in this post. Note that the scale is a log scale, so the peak at 3100 cuft/s at 2:35pm on 7-14-2010 is 50% more than the 2130 cuft/s at 6:45am on 7-13-2010.

The gage height. Gage height is a linear scale.

At least now I know that ~3000 cu ft/ second and a gage height of ~7.5 ft means water in the backyard.

Father's Day Gift - Survival radio with crank for the crank

My darling wife and son got me a survival radio for Father's Day, a Microlink FR160 MultiPurpose Radio from Eton.

It has a flashlight, radio with AM/FM and weather bands, and is rechargeable using its built in solar panel or a by turning a crank. It can even recharge some USB devices like cell phones. I guess they were inspired to get one for me during the recent (June 3rd) blackout in my area.

My twitter posts show some annoyance at not having a single radio in the house with working batteries to just see if anyone else was having the same issue. I did use my cell phone to check on twitter to find that @MattTheHearn in Claymont and @DECurmudgeon who lives nearby were also without power. S@DECurmudgeon said:

@MattTheHearn said:

So now with my new radio with crank and flashlight I would have been better prepared and possibly even able to charge my cell phone if needed.

I would have also been able to follow the progress of the weather front that was moving through the area.

My new survival radio also has seven weather bands. The weather bands for my area of Delaware are, WNG704, broadcast from Hibernia Park in Chester county or KIH28, from Philadelphia.

WNG704 (map below) broadcasts at 162.425 MHz which is WX 2 on the weather radio band.

KIH28 (map below) broadcasts at 162.475 MHz which is WX 4.

These weather channels are broadcast by towers all over the nation with the frequencies varied so there is overlap everywhere, but not interference. I haven't had the chance to test out the weather radio part yet since the order of the day on Sunday was barbecues and visits with friends.

The snow is melting slowly - Shellpot creek goes up and down

The USGS has a hydrological station on Shellpot Creek in Delaware near Wilmington down stream from my area of the creek. I have noticed the creek rising during the day the last few days. But don;t just take my word for it. Here is the chart from the station.

Up, as the snow melts during the day, and down, as the melting slows. It is interesting that the stream lags the day. I suppose the sun has to rise and melt some snow and the water must travel to the creek before it registers, and the warm part of the day isn't even getting started until noon or later. It is supposed to rain this week, so that will obliterate this nice chart. Add to the rain the snow melt that will accompany it and this might be a high creek week.

NOAA weather model of Fri and Sat Snowstorm in Delaware

Don't know what I am doing, but I created animated gif of coming Fri-Sat #DE snowstorm using NOAA weather models, cool!



The solid black to red lines are the 6 hr accumulated precipitation, multiply mm by 0.4 to get inches of snow (assuming 10" snow per inch of precip). The dotted lines are the temperature in celcius.

Shellpot Creek was a raging torrent this morning.

I would say that after that night of rain that Shellpot Creek is almost as high as it has ever been this year. It is interesting to watch and it roars when it is this high.

I will try to post some video later. I have been trying to do so all day.

More video of the raging Shellpot Creek

I tried to pan the camera downstream of the creek so that you can see the extent of the torrent.

Waterfall on raging Shellpot Creek

I would say that after that night of rain that Shellpot Creek is almost as high as it has ever been this year. It is interesting to watch and it roars when is is this high.

January Snow on Shellpot Creek

When the creek is frozen the snow stays on the creek and on the rocks.

Except in some spots. I wonder what the hot spot under the bank at this spot is.

The tree is still in the creek.

The birds love the proximity of this tree to the seed thrown on the ground by other birds at the bird feeder. Like a brush pile, it gives them a close hiding place. I still would like it if the tree were gone. It's not my tree, it started on the other side of the creek and fell down.

Gravity Wave Clouds over Wilmington Delaware yesterday

There were these strange cloud formations over Wilmington, Delaware yesterday around 5pm. There looked like the clouds were large waves with light and dark areas that looked like a frozen undulation across the sky. I recalled that there is a cloud effect called gravity waves and I tried to get a picture or two with my cell phone. Unfortunately the pictures don't give the full effect. You could see many bands of dark and light depending on the direction you looked and the waves stretched from horizon to horizon, it was very eerie. I took two pictures pointed to be next to each other to try to give a sense of the scale.

Looking slightly left (approx west north west)

Looking slightly Right (approx north west)


This youtube video shows an time-lapse example of gravity waves over Toma, Iowa that gives the full effect.



I didn't have the time or equipment to try to capture that much time-lapse motion of our gravity waves clouds yesterday. So many natural phenomena, so little time.