Flood — Lucas, Ohio

2015-03-12 to 2015-03-16 · near Maumee, Lucas, Ohio

Event narrative

On March 12th an ice jam formed on the Maumee River in Maumee Ohio. The river was frozen from Maumee to the mouth of the river at Lake Erie. The ice jam and subsequent water rises caused the Side Cut Metropark to close and experience record flooding. The road between Jerome Road and an access road east of Riverside Cemetery was damaged by the moving ice and needed repairs. In Maumee the Side Cut Metropark sustained around $50,000 in damages. The Riverside Cemetery is estimated to have sustained $1 million in damages. In Monclova the ice jams damaged two homes on North River Road. These homes sustained damage from the ice to their decks and exterior. Only one of the two homes had water inundation into the interior. The waste water treatment plant was impacted by the ice and rising river levels and had to bring in pumps to keep operations going.

Wider weather episode

From mid-January through early March of 2015, frigid and much below normal temperatures set the stage for ice jam development along rivers and creeks in the Lake Erie drainage basin. Nearly every climate station in the Cleveland WFO region saw their coldest February on record in 2015. As a result, Lake Erie was 98% frozen by early March. The lake is the mouth for almost all of northern Ohio and Pennsylvania rivers and creeks. When the lake is ice covered, it becomes a barrier to the natural outflow of the rivers.

Going into March the area had a widespread and significant snowpack based on regional climatology. The snowpack was heaviest across the snowbelt where the average depth was two to three feet. Elsewhere the snowpack had compacted to eight inches or less. A survey conducted by NWS Cleveland employees shortly before the thaw revealed the snow water equivalent in the snowpack to be one to two inches west and south of Cleveland, and three to five inches in the snowbelt to the east.

By the middle of March temperatures began to warm. A result of the warming was that by the end of the second week of March the snowpack was mostly gone except in the snowbelt. The runoff from this snowmelt began to raise river levels and break up the ice sheets that had accumulated along most northern Ohio and Pennsylvania Rivers. Numerous ice jams formed during this time, however no flooding impacts were reported.

A rain event moved along the Ohio River on the 13th resulting in rapid runoff in the region. The rainfall was not substantial in the Lake Erie basins, with amounts near a trace in the Maumee River near Toledo, to three quarters of an inch in the Cuyahoga Basin near Cleveland. Though not significant, the rainfall was sufficient enough to raise river levels. For those rivers experiencing ice jams, the increased flow was forced to back up and out of the river banks. The ice jams shifted and moved between the 13th through the 18th until the rivers were able to empty into Lake Erie. During that time numerous communities were impacted by the ice jams. Below is a summary of some of those communities.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.5700, -83.6500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 556583. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.