Florence Flood Mitigation

We touched on the uses of Jordan and Falls Lake in a previous post.  One of those uses is currently evident in the aftermath of the recently passed Hurricane Florence.  The storm dumped between 6 and 12 inches of rain over the Falls Lake Watershed. With those rainfall totals, discharge from the lake should be higher than normal or raging.

The flood storage use of the Lake’, however, requires that the Army Corps hold back water to help mitigate downstream flooding.  With that objective you get the following hydrograph for Falls Lake where 62% of its storage is intended for flood control:

Lake managers will keep discharges from the Lake low to try to mitigate downstream flooding.  They’ll hold the water behind the dam until the downstream flooding ebbs. Until that happens, however, you can walk across the Neuse below Falls Lake.