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Three Arial Photos

These three images show part of the Winooski River located in Montpelier, VT. The 1927 image was shot shortly after a record flooding event. The 2004 image was a reshot done by Jens Hilke. All of these images show the Montpelier Country Club in the background along with the forests, houses, and roads around it. In the 1927 photo, there is a lot of erosion along the river due to the severe flood. We can see that in the 2004 photo, there is a lot of recovery from the flood and then by 2020, there is very little erosion or evidence of this major flooding event. In the 1927 photo, there is not a lot of forested areas, but that changes by 2004, as we can see more trees, and even more forested area in 2020. The shape of the Winooski River itself has not changed too much over the three timescales. The river looks to be more narrow in 2004 and 2020, but that is most likely just due to excess water in 1927 from the flood.

Table and Probability Plot

The variability (percent standard deviation) of the annual maximum flood series is about 52.04 percent and the variability of the average stream flow is about 24.3 percent. This value is half of the value for the peak streamflow. This difference is due to the major outlier of the 1927 flood, this flood event skews the data drasticallly. The 1927 flood is only included in the peak stream flow data and if this data point is removed, the variability changes to be about 30 percent, which shows that this flood is an outlier. Another reason for this difference is that we can expect that maxium flood events have higher discharge than average streamflow so therefore we will see higher values for the peak streamflow than the average flow.