St. John River ice on the move

FORT KENT – River watchers, professionals at the National Weather Service at Caribou and those who live along the St. John River with years of experience watching the water are keeping an eye on the mighty river that has a history of wreaking havoc along its shores in the spring.

Northern Maine, especially in the basin of the upper St. John River watershed, received record snowfalls this winter, and a lot of that snow remains in the woods. The snow cover has high levels of water in it, according to river watchers.

Ice cover on the St. John River has not been heavy, and some areas of the river have shed the ice already. Small ice jams, which formed in warmer periods in January, are still not causing major obstructions.

The largest ice jam on the St. John River is at the Big Rapids, above the town of Allagash, according to Roy Gardner, a former Allagash selectman who has been watching the river for years. That jam is about three miles long.

“The river doesn’t look too bad, even with the ice jam in the Big Rapids,” the now retired Gardner said Wednesday. “Even that jam is nothing serious at this point. It seems to be breaking up a bit each day.

“Below town, the ice is breaking up slowly at Cross Rock, and it’s breaking up along the shores all the way to Fort Kent,” he said. “Below Fort Kent there is open water to Frenchville.”

While the river ice is solid from Frenchville to near Madawaska, there is open water east of Madawaska to Grand Isle. From Grand Isle to a hydroelectric dam at Grand Falls, New Brunswick, the river is still solid.

“We need a bigger flow of water to move the ice,” Gardner said. “I am keeping an eye on it every day.

“The weather plays a big part in this,” he explained. “Right now the weather is nice, warm, but it gets cold at night and that slows the water reaching the river.”

Gardner said there is a lot of ice in some places on the St. John River, but other areas of the waterway have little ice. The Allagash area still has 32 inches of snow on the ground, he said, and the water content of that is high at 10 inches of water.

Gardner said there is not a huge amount of water in the St. John River for this time of year.

Fort Kent Police Chief Kenneth Michaud, who has watched the river for some five decades, agreed with Gardner on the amount of water in the St. John River. He said the river at Fort Kent on Wednesday had 11.4 feet of water in it, down from 14.2 feet a week ago.

Flood stage at Fort Kent is 28 feet. The St. John River has to reach nearly 32 feet for the water to lap the underside of the International Bridge there.

Victor Newhan of the National Weather Service at Caribou generally agreed with the views of the river watchers.

“While the river has come up a couple of feet, it is well below flood stage,” he said Wednesday. “The water has begun to lift some of the ice, but there has not been any significant risings of the water.”

Michaud said there are very few problem areas on the river, and that ice jams in some places Wednesday were small.

The Fish River at Fort Kent is open, with a channel open through the waters at Fort Kent Mills. Ice on Eagle Lake, the first major lake on the Fish River chain of lakes into Fort Kent, has solid ice with no movement, Michaud said.

“I don’t think it will flood unless we get big rains,” Michaud said. “Water from the melting snow is going into the ground.

“The snow cover [which was as much as 6 feet a few weeks ago] has come down a lot,” he continued. “There is still a lot of water in the woods, and that snow has a lot of water in it.”

Michaud said he was more worried earlier in the spring because of the huge amounts of snow on the ground. Water was higher in the St. John River a couple of weeks ago.

Michaud believes the melt is a little behind normal, probably because of the huge amounts of snow the winter left. He said the St. John River usually runs its ice at Fort Kent around April 22.

Newhan of the NWS said that although levels are not near flood stage now, “that could change later in the week, as more mild weather comes to the region.”

“[But] at this time there is no indication or reports of any flooding due to ice jams,” he said.