Crosscurrents Blog

Floodspotting Most people hate the rain. Not me. Give me a good thunderstorm and you're likely to find me in a wet T-shirt and bare feet, splashing happily down the street to unfoul the rain gutters and bust the leaf dams. Once upon a time, being a river rat meant heading north to huge wilderness watersheds in Canada. These days, I stick closer to home, eagerly tracking the latest precipitation event online, and planning my next floodspotting field trip. If you want to see whitewater inside Route 128, you had better move fast--most flood events last only a matter of hours, as we are so close to sea level and the terrain is relatively low. But if you get your skates on, you can see a roaring waterfall in Greater Boston with a little floodspotting. Real-Time Stream Gauge Data for Massachusetts Want to be a floodspotter? Start with the USGS real-time stream gauge data for your local state. I start paying attention when the dots turn dark blue, but the real fun starts whe...