Flood risk

The Amphibex, entering the water from Stanley / New Edinburgh Park has been working its way slowly upriver towards the Chinese Embassy these past two days, while the sun has shone from a very blue sky, making the expanses of ice and snow quite dazzling.

Over the weekend, we had relentless rain, later turning to snow; during the rainy phase conditions were ideal for ice-dams to form on the roof and cause leaks (enough water in our basement, for example, to require the removal of two large chunks of "dry wall" and insulation as well as part of the flooring—repairs and renovations to follow). The nuisance is relative. As recently as the 1980s, there had been worse to fear from the thaws in Ottawa: floods piling loose river ice high along the banks of the Rideau and, in the breaches, water that swept into houses several hundred metres from the river itself, sometimes completely submerging parked cars, and trickling in under people's doorways.

The drainage area of the Lower Rideau watershed covers 800 square kilometres. These days, the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority carefully maps the area and calculates the potential for flooding in order to help keep all this water under control.