New Brunswick By Web Camera: April 2008

30 April 2008

A Flood Creeps Up on New Brunswick

The rain that we had in north western New Brunswick and the upper reaches of the Saint John River came at a crucial point. It cleared out all the snow in the Mont Farlagne area.

But some snow remains in the shadow areas in the woods near Glenwood.

What is different now is that the soil temperature and snow temperature are close to the melting point and when 100 mm of warm rain fell on it last night there was a significant increase in the flow of meltwater coming down the river.

We no longer have a good web camera view of the river but the river is now coming to the cameras. The City Hall Fred E-zone camera this evening shows that the parking lot behind city hall has flooded.

The highway bridge does not appear to have changed much even with the depth increase as shown in the MRDC Coytown-Sheffield camera.

I see that someone in MRDC decided that the change in the Longs Creek camera was a roaring success and turned the Salisbury camera around away from the rising sun with a more south west view that includes the whole highway and an overpass with a full farm in the background this might now be a fun camera to keep an eye on.

And this is what the province looked like this evening. The highway cameras are all showing an unlovely but pretty much dry, brown view. We can look forward to green after the wave of blue.

23 April 2008

Flooding Hits Fredericton and Camera Changes

The latest news on the Saint John River near Fredericton:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2008/04/23/nb-flood.html

This morning the St. John River reached flood levels at Fredericton and Maugerville with the river coming over the banks in Maugerville and covering the main road in low spots through the small farming community. The news love this story and we will see "on the spot" reporters interviewing the hardy farmer folk that will stoically face the flood. In fact, the number of working farms in Maugerville and Sheffield could be counted on the fingers of two hands with fingers left over. The real back story to this are the people who were allowed to build on the river banks in a flood plain. The first thing that they did was cut down all the maple trees had held the riverbank together. The older homes and farming homes are back from the river, built higher and don't have finished basements. We will see how this plays out.

Anyway, the only web camera with a clear view of the river gave this image this morning.

And then this notice went up.

So now we are blind except for the incidental views in the background of the City Hall Fred E-zone image and from the MRDC Sheffield-Coytown Bridge camera. Speaking of the MRDC I see someone realised that their web cameras were useless for an hour each day because they burned out facing the sunrise. Somebody turned the Longs Creek camera around so it now faces west and only sees one lane of the highway and the tops of vehicles on the overpass. But this was the image this morning and as you can see at least the image exists now.

Finally we need to say "Hi!" to the good people of Beaver Harbour (who, it must be assumed are also the people who host the web camera) as the camera caught them fertilizing their lawn last night. It is good to see ya folks.

22 April 2008

They Have Bigger Concerns than the Flood in Fredericton

A couple of days ago the St. John River was high but not alarming in Fredericton but the old dynamic has started. It seems that they have opened the floodgates at Mactaquac so that the potato farmers up river won't get wet. This has resulted in the river rising down river. Look at the up river "knees" on the piers left from the old Carlton Street Bridge from two days ago ...

And now look at them, they are pretty much immersed. But then I guess the flood is the least of Fredericton's concerns now that they have been infected with ....

GIANT MAN-EATING SPIDERS!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!

LINK to the latest CBC News on flooding

18 April 2008

Smoke gets in My Eyes

Well of course there would be news on flooding in the upper Saint John River after I posted yesterday. I stand by what I said. Unless it rains or the ice dams the upper river we have perfect conditions for getting rid of all this snow.

LINK to CBC Article on St. John River flooding

And as a perfect counterpoint to my post yesterday the Fred E-zone camera on the river has gone down. The only time of the year that the camera shows anything more interesting than people not picking up after their dogs and the camera turns off. Go figure. At least the parking lot camera in Officers Square is still up but gives a much less informative view of the river.

I also noticed last night that MRDC camera caught images that prove that the good citizens of Coytown - Gagetown like to burn their grass.

Finally, it would appear that the person in charge of the webcamera in Beaver Harbour is trying to decide on a new view for the camera. All winter it was a standard panorama view like this:

If you look closely all the following views are either parts or extensions of this view. For a while it moved to the extreme left and focused on a side road (where once again we see New Brunswickers like to burn their dead grass).

Then our intrepid camera operator decided to explore a number of options with it appearing that the decision was finally made to focus on a small section of the panorama that highlighted the harbour itself.

I would note that this last change seems to suggest a change in the location of the camera not just the focus of the frame. Interesting choices.

I have pretty much given up on the Forestry Center camera in Fredericton. The camera covering has become so stained and discoloured that the view is always ugly and we can all live without ugly.

17 April 2008

Spring in New Brunswick And the River Stays in Bed

Spring has arrived in New Brunswick and is creeping further up the province. Everyone is well aware that there are two things that will happen over the next month. The snow will melt and the water will flow. What is crucial in this process is the rate of both. The spring melt got as far north as Meductic on Tuesday as this time lapse sequence of the highway webcamera shows if you look at the snowbank in front of the camera.

Now, once the snow melts the water has to drain out somewhere and there are three majour, independent drainage rivers in New Brunswick: the Saint John River, the Miramichi and the Saint Croix. The available webcameras only give us a view of the Saint John River near Fredericton. There are three views: the Fred E-zone cameras show the river and in fact the Officers Square view has been changed from the melting ice rink to across the parking lot to the river (it would have been nice if they had have scraped a bit more filth off the lens but it is a more interesting image). In addition, the standard riverfront camera has been giving a reliable view of the river.

The final webcamera view of the river comes from one of the MRDC cameras and yes, they still face due east so are useless until the sun is high in the sky and yes they still fog up in damp weather but the camera at the Coytown-Sheffield highway bridge does give an incidental view of the river.So the Saint John River is high but still in its banks for one reason. No rain. For the most part the warm weather has been coupled to cool/cold nights which allows the meltwater to drain and the lack of rain has meant that we are only dealing with melt water.

But the spring is not over yet and when it comes to the Saint John River the web cameras tell the story. The lowest level of the river on camera are the ones above (taken today 17 April). As you go up the river valley you can see the images from the MRDC and Brun-Way webcameras just what we are facing.

At Longs Creek the exposed snow is gone and while the ditches still have water in them the meltwater has pretty much drained away.

Meductic we saw above but this is the view today and we can see that there is significantly more snow to deal with as we head up the river.

At the Aristook River the snow has pretty much melted away but it is clear that the fields and forests still have a burden of snow to leave yet.

And at the same is true at Quisbis Hill and if anything it would appear that the forests have a significant harvest of snow still to be released.

But at Mont Farlagne the snow lies heavy on the ground and there lies the tale. A couple days of warm rain on the upper reaches of the Saint John River and everybody will need to head for high ground.

So with a note of caution we enjoy the Sun that we have now. Indeed, the Fredericton City Hall camera caught a glimpse of the first Sun worshipers of the year if you look at the album cover of the view of the province below.

HWY170408at115pm

As a tiny postscript to this posting I would note that there is a very incidental view of the Nashwaak River through the trees behind the church at Durham Bridge but you have to want to see it.

13 April 2008

Sunday 13 April: It is Warmer and the River is Rising

I had to make the trip to Fredericton and had an opportunity to use the NB Highway system. The MRDC highway between Moncton and Fredericton is polluted with white tailed deer like this guy.

Instead of staying with the MRDC highway I pulled off at the Coytown-Sheffield Highway Bridge (where the MRDC webcamera is located) and continued up along the Saint John River through Sheffield and Maugerville to get to Fredericton.

About McGowen's Corner I crossed paths with this aloof eagle on a snag near the highway and the river.

As the picture shows the river was still frozen over but that changed in the two days that I was in Fredericton. It is warmer now and the snow is rapidly receding. This is the Fred e-zone Webcamera view of the river on April 5 ...

And April 7 ...

And today April 13 ...

So the River has opened up and there are flood warnings out. A week of warm rain and everyone will be swimming. In terms of the web cameras the Beaver Harbour image has been frozen on an afternoon image since the 7th of April. The MRDC cameras are useless for the 30 minutes to an hour as the morning sun comes over the horizon and the last rain storm took them all out again but they came back in a day. In Fredericton the Officers Square camera has been a mess for a month but there is nothing to look at. All in all the colours are grey, brown and white and probably will be for a while. And this is how the province looked today: