Did you know? The flood of 1936 crested over Huntingdon County in the dark, in the small hours of March 18. And on two of our creeks it still did not beat 1889.
The United States Geological Survey had gages running here that week and published every reading two years later. Second feet below is the old way of saying cubic feet of water going past a point every second.
Great Trough Creek near Marklesburg peaked around midnight going into the eighteenth, at about 9,580 second feet. The biggest thing that gage had recorded in the six years before was 2,180.
Shaver Creek near Petersburg reached a stage of 9.32 feet at 3:15 that morning, measured afterward off the flood marks.
Aughwick Creek near Orbisonia crested at 3:30 a.m. at 16,400 second feet, 19.16 feet on the gage.
Standing Stone Creek, three and a half miles up from Huntingdon, topped out around 9:30 a.m. at about 5,070 second feet.
Now the part nobody expects. On Aughwick Creek the Survey records a bigger flood than 1936, and it is June 1889: about 18,400 second feet, 20.5 feet, read off flood marks. On Standing Stone Creek the maximum known stage in the whole record is also 1889, 9.38 feet on the first of June.
Two of our creeks had already seen worse, forty seven years earlier.
Tell us what they said.
Sources
- Water-Supply Paper 799, The Floods of March 1936, Part 2: Hudson River to Susquehanna River Region (Nathan C. Grover, Chief Hydraulic Engineer; prepared in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works), United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey / U.S. Government Printing Office (1937)
- Water-Supply Paper 799, same report, Raystown Branch gage (context for scale, not quoted in the post), United States Geological Survey (1937)
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