HINTON W.Va. (Hinton News) – This week’s piece relates to a very recent event, which everyone in Summers County was more than likely aware of. That was the horrific flooding that occurred on the East Coast due to the terrible rain event caused by Hurricane Helene.
This caused flooding on the New River from the flooding that occurred in North Carolina and Virginia last week. You see the New River flows “backward”, well it doesn’t exactly flow backward. It is very unique in that it is one of 250 rivers in the world that flows north. There are more than 150,000(ish) rivers in the world that flow north to south, unlike the New which flows south to north making it an extraordinarily uncommon river.
Last week’s historic event caused the third highest crest of Bluestone Lake at 1,493.7 feet on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024. Only surpassed by the highest crest in April 1960 at 1,506.4. Then again in January of 1996 caused by the melt of the blizzard snow from warm temperatures and a rain event throughout Appalachia.
I have not been able to verify how many of the top floodgates had to be open during the 1960 flood. I have only heard first-hand accounts from people who lived in Bellpoint at that time of the subtle vibrations that were felt from the great pressure that was on the dam caused by this event!
Then in 1996 five of the top flood gates had to be opened. And again I could not find records of the crest of the lake during this flood. The most recent water was 3.7 feet upon the top gates when it crested, the bottom of the top gates are at 1490 feet. The top of those gates are 1520 feet and the top of the dam is 1535 feet.
I have mentioned historic flooding events in a few of my stories, being a “Pence Springs boy” my main interest growing up was with the Greenbrier River, which feeds into the New in Hinton. My fascination with weather, more specifically, started when I was 9 years old when the great flood of 1996 occurred.
There was a huge blizzard that had dumped feet of snow in our part of the country. In mid-January of that year around the 17th weather changed suddenly. It became warmer in the 50’s and we had prolonged rain even on the 17th and 18th. The combination of snow melt combined with the rain resulted in historic flooding in our region on the 19th and 20th.
I remember going to bed on Jan. 17 with feet of snow still on the ground. It warmed that night and started raining. When I woke up you could hear the creek on our farm roaring. School wasn’t called off that morning like it often is now for this type of occurrence.
I was in 5th grade in Mr. Oxley’s class. We weren’t at school for maybe an hour until we were sent to the gym to wait for the buses to take us home before the roads became impassable. We made it home and as I said before my brother went with my father to help move items out of the Country Roads Store here in Pence Springs and then to our neighbor’s house. I helped with the cleanup of both.
The flood of 1996 crested at 24.33 feet, which is more than 14 feet above flood stage in Alderson. Making it the highest flood in recorded history. Some other noteworthy floods on the Greenbrier were the floods of 1985, 2016, 1973,1967. There have been many more but these were the record breakers for their times.
The Bluestone Dam has done its job for 75 years preventing floods downriver from Hinton. Many people mistakenly believe it was built for flood control in Hinton. The dam in Hinton was actually proposed before Congress in the 1940s to prevent a devastating flood from striking Charleston, WV which was the largest producer of chemicals on the East Coast at that time.
Which is why Congress allocated $30,000,000. At that time it would have been the equivalent of $593,701,935 in today’s dollar. By holding back the water from the New and Bluestone Rivers the Bluestone Dam helps to prevent severe flooding in Hinton and on downstream caused by the Greenbrier River.
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