“Well, looks like we won’t be having a white Christmas.”

“Yes, it looks that way.”

“Is this global warming?”

“Probably. Aren’t we supposed to say global climate change now?”

“Whatever.”

On Monday, Dec. 18, a state of emergency was declared in Essex County because of flooding caused by heavy rains throughout the region. I was unaware of it that morning when I texted my friend Cora. I said I was headed to Elizabethtown for a doctor’s appointment and then to Lake Placid. Cora begged to differ.

“You’ll never get there,” she told me, “or if you do, you won’t be able to get back home. There’s flooding everywhere because of all the rain we’ve been having.”

Cora was right. Warm temperatures — warm for December anyway — and heavy rains had melted mountain snow, sending the East Branch of the AuSable River gushing over its banks. According to one local news source, in AuSable Forks it rose 11 feet, which is 1.5 feet over its designated flood stage. I don’t know who designates flood stages, but yes, the water was high.

The AuSable River is a watershed, fed by more 70 creeks and streams from its headwaters in the High Peaks to its mouth, where it empties into Lake Champlain. The Ausable’s two main tributaries are the Chubb River and Black Brook.

According to the Ausable River Association, “A watershed is an ecological community defined by the shape of the land and the flow of fresh water to a common point.”

In spring, when the mountain snows are melting, the AuSable is high and rushing. Because it is a watershed, it will be shallower, in places a mere trickle, and its current will slow when rainfall is low. It is unusual to have this kind of watershed overflow in late December.

Cora sent me a video of the AuSable River Impinging on her property, as seen from her window.

“There are whitecaps in the woods!” she said. “It looks like the Hudson River outside!”

Eventually, fearful of the ever encroaching waters, Cora packed a bag and left her house to stay with neighbors on higher ground for a few hours until the flood subsided.

I joined some friends who had decided to see how far we could drive along state Route 73 between Keene Valley and Keene. I was hoping to take some pictures. Not far, as it happened.

We didn’t get past Marcy Field, the old airfield, before we were turned back by emergency personnel. Roads closed because of flooding: Holt, Airport, Hulls Falls, Hurricane, routes 73 and 9N and more.

Elizabethtown was flooded, and even if I had tried to go around the long way, through New Russia, I would not have been able to make my doctor’s appointment. New Russia, I learned, was “isolated by flooding.”

Since Keene Central School was closed, I asked my neighbor Lila, who is 9, if she’d like to make some Christmas cookies with me. We had a nice afternoon in my kitchen. As it turned out, Lila is already an accomplished baker. From a wealth of cookie cutters I’d collected over decades, she chose only a few, all of them traditional. Santa Claus, or one of his elves — hard to tell which — a reindeer and a gingerbread boy shape. No dinosaurs, unicorns or sharks for Lila on this occasion.

All was not blissful calm in the midst of the storm, however. There was some worry, as Lila’s mom was afraid that Lila’s dad would be prevented by the rising waters from getting home from work, and Lila’s brother’s kayak, formerly propped against a tree on the bank of the AuSable behind the house, had been carried away downriver.

Not to mention the fact that I had invited Cora, whose birthday was the next day, to my house for dinner, a celebration that would have to be postponed.

My neighbors were kind enough to call that night to say that the kayak had been discovered by the Keene Valley Country Club, and Lila’s dad had made it safely home (I never doubted he would).

Unfortunately, the receding waters revealed damage to Cora’s road which prevents her from driving out until repairs are made.

While the rains seem to be over, the weather report from now until Christmas does not look promising for those who want all their Christmases to be white. But you never know!

Have a good week.

——

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News for more than 20 years.)