Floody Waters

After a long rainy spell in Coshocton, the weather finally cleared up and a 30.65inHg high pressure zone camped out over the fields and vales of this part of Ohio. It was absolutely beautiful all day, so after work, I was itchin' to get out and enjoy the day. You can see me soaking in the warm rays in the opposing photo. Very nice. Even nicer was that I have become such an expert with taxiing the DA40, that I can do it with my eyes shut (see photo). Let's just say that the Dad's pucker factor was WAY up, and we hadn't even left the ground. This flight, incidentally, marked my first two un-assisted landings in the DA40, and there were no tail strikes:). I still think that Dad was a little apprehensive on short final about whether I would flare right...

Anyhoo...lots of rain means floody waters. The Muskingum River was up about 17ft above flood stage, and it really shows in the pictures below.
These pictures were taken in the Muskingum River valley, just north of Dresden, OH. A little bit o' water flowing over those banks, huh? It's really neat to fly over the river and see where the river USED to flow 500 years ago. Pretty neat.

Speaking of pretty neat, we then headed north to Mohawk Dam, one of the several flood control dams in the Muskingum Valley Watershed. At the time that this photo was taken, the lake level in Mohawk Dam was about 50ft above normal winter pool. You can check out the real time lake levels in the Muskingum Valley Watershed courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers here. Of course, you can always just fly over and check them out real-time yourself. Can you read the lake level marker from 1800ft AGL? Yeah, I didn't think so...

Mohawk Dam from about 3 miles away....

Directly over Lake Mohawk, looking west

Directly over Lake Mohawk, looking south