Still in need of rain, but it looks like a lot of NE PA is gonna get a nice blanket of snow.
Recent Rain
- Thread starter salmo
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salmo
Well-known member
8.9 inches of snow is almost the equivalent of an inch of rain. Not so bad.
Duriensbane
Member
been back and forth with my friend whos excited about how much we are going to get across PA as they are calling for snow next week for most of PA. Id be happy with a few inches any day right now, and personally id rather snow then rain for the future as the rain we got last night in york was to fast to make much of a difference. Slow soakers is a must right now to help with how little we've gotten over the last few months.
DomR
Active member
Snow will also be appreciated rifle season.
jifigz
Well-known member
I agree. It would be awesome to have a couple of inches of snow on the ground for deer rifle.
salmo
Well-known member
Montgomery County got about 1.5 inches of rain in the past several days. Northwest NJ received 22 inches of snow in some spots. Good news for the Pocono ski resorts?
Swattie87
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It was really hit or miss. Saw a shot of Camelback on the news last night and they just had a dusting, at the base of the mountain anyway. Could still see grass. I’m sure there was more up top, but, depends on where you were. I saw several locations well over a foot along the NY border and in some of the higher elevation spots in the Endless Mountains. Beyond the ridgetops though, in most places, this will be gone by Monday.
Bamboozle
Well-known member
1.34" in my backyard and more to come next week!!
It means nothing but I drove past the Perkiomen Creek yesterday during the rain/snow event and it looked almost normal level-wise.
It means nothing but I drove past the Perkiomen Creek yesterday during the rain/snow event and it looked almost normal level-wise.
tomgamber
Well-known member
Sump pump been popping last two days.
Fly-Swatter
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Northern Lackawanna Co.: We got well over an inch of rain on Thursday, followed by more than a foot of wet snow. over 50k homes & businesses lost power. We also lost internet service for a few hours. There are broken trees and shrubs all over the area. Parts of 81, 84, and 380 were closed for hours yesterday.
Not great.
Not great.
JimKennedy
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This is our last, best hope for a good rain. I saw a presentation by a fisheries biologist just before the November 21-22 rain. Maryland, and I’m going to guess southern tier Pennsylvania also, has had poor survival of hatchling trout for the past few years, including the autumn 2023 year class.
Drought, of course, is terrible, but I learned that wintertime rains and especially high water also tend to wipe out large numbers of hatchlings.
If we get rain and the water comes up a little while the eggs are still in the redds, that’s mostly good because it means the water is not dropping, possibly exposing the eggs.
But if we get high water after the eggs hatch, the hatchlings (sac fry and fry) are just washed down stream and often out of areas where they can survive.
In Maryland last year we had a double hit: autumnal drought followed by post hatch high water.
A good snow pack, however would do the fish a world of good as the melting snow trickle charges springs of all kinds.
While it is possible some of the limestone creeks are exceptions to the early fall rains good, midwinter rain bad rule, in Maryland, our only fishable limestoner, beaver creek near Hagerstown, had a collapse in its flow last year.
This followed the big, as yet unexplained, fish kill in the upper reaches. Powell hatchery was affected, and the remaining wild browns in the creek had very poor spawning conditions.
The spring has come back, and the hope is this year’s spawn will be a good one.
An odd side note: it appears the absence of big browns in the fly zone just down from Powell hatchery has allowed an unusually large cohort of escaped hatchery fingerlings to take hold. They once they get a little size on them, they will probably provide sport in the next few years.
And now for a digression into a rabbit hole side subject.
Successful rainbow spawning is vanishingly unlikely in beaver creek, because the hatchery strain is almost exclusively female. They’re kind of like seedless watermelons or massive garden breeds of tomatoes: they get big pretty fast on less food than wild strains, but they mostly can’t reproduce.
I say mostly because they do go through the motions of spawning, to include going on spawning runs (of maybe a dozen or so fish statewide) out of the Baltimore area reservoirs in December and January.
My dad had some success with catching them, and the fellow who owned Sett’s sporting goods in Towson until he died about 5 years ago kind of built his life around catching them (unmarried, secretive, and more trout obsessed than is probably healthy).
I’ve made a few attempts in recent years, but really have not dedicated the time required.
That said, I did catch a young of year rainbow in Morgan run, a liberty reservoir trib, a few years back. Trout are genetically strange compared to a lot of creatures in that they have chromosomes that come not only in pairs, but sometimes in triples or more (multiploid, for those who have not had the good sense to move on to other posts).
This gives them a long shot chance at having the occasional unfertilized egg develop into an adult fish (parthenogenesis). It can also happen with frogs, but frogs are even stranger than fish.
So I rather want to believe the little rainbow I caught in Morgan run was the result of parthenogenesis. There are other explanations, but most are similarly long shots.
Back to the subject at hand: pray for rain. And snow.
Drought, of course, is terrible, but I learned that wintertime rains and especially high water also tend to wipe out large numbers of hatchlings.
If we get rain and the water comes up a little while the eggs are still in the redds, that’s mostly good because it means the water is not dropping, possibly exposing the eggs.
But if we get high water after the eggs hatch, the hatchlings (sac fry and fry) are just washed down stream and often out of areas where they can survive.
In Maryland last year we had a double hit: autumnal drought followed by post hatch high water.
A good snow pack, however would do the fish a world of good as the melting snow trickle charges springs of all kinds.
While it is possible some of the limestone creeks are exceptions to the early fall rains good, midwinter rain bad rule, in Maryland, our only fishable limestoner, beaver creek near Hagerstown, had a collapse in its flow last year.
This followed the big, as yet unexplained, fish kill in the upper reaches. Powell hatchery was affected, and the remaining wild browns in the creek had very poor spawning conditions.
The spring has come back, and the hope is this year’s spawn will be a good one.
An odd side note: it appears the absence of big browns in the fly zone just down from Powell hatchery has allowed an unusually large cohort of escaped hatchery fingerlings to take hold. They once they get a little size on them, they will probably provide sport in the next few years.
And now for a digression into a rabbit hole side subject.
Successful rainbow spawning is vanishingly unlikely in beaver creek, because the hatchery strain is almost exclusively female. They’re kind of like seedless watermelons or massive garden breeds of tomatoes: they get big pretty fast on less food than wild strains, but they mostly can’t reproduce.
I say mostly because they do go through the motions of spawning, to include going on spawning runs (of maybe a dozen or so fish statewide) out of the Baltimore area reservoirs in December and January.
My dad had some success with catching them, and the fellow who owned Sett’s sporting goods in Towson until he died about 5 years ago kind of built his life around catching them (unmarried, secretive, and more trout obsessed than is probably healthy).
I’ve made a few attempts in recent years, but really have not dedicated the time required.
That said, I did catch a young of year rainbow in Morgan run, a liberty reservoir trib, a few years back. Trout are genetically strange compared to a lot of creatures in that they have chromosomes that come not only in pairs, but sometimes in triples or more (multiploid, for those who have not had the good sense to move on to other posts).
This gives them a long shot chance at having the occasional unfertilized egg develop into an adult fish (parthenogenesis). It can also happen with frogs, but frogs are even stranger than fish.
So I rather want to believe the little rainbow I caught in Morgan run was the result of parthenogenesis. There are other explanations, but most are similarly long shots.
Back to the subject at hand: pray for rain. And snow.
Swattie87
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I think we’re all pulling for a heavy snowpack and Spring runoff next year. I know I hope I’m not fishing until mid-July!
Other than maybe the extreme highest ridgetops in the Laurel Highlands, and even that’s a pretty big stretch most years, in PA, we all realize there’s no such thing as a snowpack and spring runoff right?
Just asking because it keeps being brought up as if it’s a real thing. Our snow, even sizable ones, is usually gone in a week. Yes, the snow melt is beneficial in that it slowly releases that water over time, not relatively all at once like rain, but if you have a dry February/March (lack of snow or rain), you’re gonna have low water in the Spring. In any case, any snow (or rain) in November will have zero impact on next year’s flows. And even a heavy moisture rich snow in March will have zero impact on the Summer’s conditions.
In PA, to have good flows at any time of year, you need relatively recent (within the last two weeks or so) significant precipitation. Small, true limestone springs (Letort for example), are sorta an exception to this, as their flows are very tolerant of high water and drought with the Karst geology, but they’re not immune to it.
Other than maybe the extreme highest ridgetops in the Laurel Highlands, and even that’s a pretty big stretch most years, in PA, we all realize there’s no such thing as a snowpack and spring runoff right?
Just asking because it keeps being brought up as if it’s a real thing. Our snow, even sizable ones, is usually gone in a week. Yes, the snow melt is beneficial in that it slowly releases that water over time, not relatively all at once like rain, but if you have a dry February/March (lack of snow or rain), you’re gonna have low water in the Spring. In any case, any snow (or rain) in November will have zero impact on next year’s flows. And even a heavy moisture rich snow in March will have zero impact on the Summer’s conditions.
In PA, to have good flows at any time of year, you need relatively recent (within the last two weeks or so) significant precipitation. Small, true limestone springs (Letort for example), are sorta an exception to this, as their flows are very tolerant of high water and drought with the Karst geology, but they’re not immune to it.
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dudemanspecial
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Thank you, I came here to say this myself. There is little to no snowpack / runoff effect in PA. Our mountains are too short and our snow is not plentiful enough.
goose54cdd
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Who are you calling short?
dudemanspecial
Well-known member
I am allowed to use the "s" word as I am height deficient myself.
Swattie87
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I think it was the Appalachians.
More specifically/locally, the Laurel Highlands, the Alleghenies, the Endless Mountains, and the Poconos.
TimMurphy
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Dear dudemanspecial,
Recently, yes, but you youngin's probably don't remember 1993, or 1996. In 1993 I lived around Binghamton NY. We had snow covering the ground from Halloween until Easter, and not just a dusting either. We lost over 50 inches of snow pack in one night in late January and most of the NB of the Susquehanna lost 40 plus inches. If a front hadn't come through to drop the temperature by 30 degrees in less than 12 hours the Agnes flood would have become just a distant memory. There were 3/4-ton pick-up sized ice blocks on the banks of the Susquehanna in late April. After that January flood the snow returned to cover the ground until early April.
1996 was similar but not nearly as bad. I took a vacation with my brother, and we fished Spring Creek for a full week before Memorial Day. The water was bank full the whole week and the fishing was spectacular because of the long and gradually snow melt that Winter. It didn't rain a drop that week, and the creek never dropped below bank full the entire time.
Since then, we really haven't had many memorable snows. What we have had is years with both zero rain and far too much rain, with precious few years being even remotely normal.
I miss the olde days!
Regards,
Tim Murphy 🙂
