Yes... I'm sure we will and here is why (And please, I'm not a math major, so if anyone can check my math, I'd appreciate it):
The average-density "packed powder" snow is approximately 220,000 gallons of water per acre-foot, or 5.05 Gallons per Cubic Foot (As opposed to 7.48 gallons of liquid water per cubic foot) or about 2/3rds the density of liquid water.
Allegheny County has ~730 Square Miles of land area, not counting bodies of water. That is 20,351,232,000 square feet.
The average depth of snow, on the ground, as of 6pm tonight was 20 inches. That means for every square foot of snow, there is One-and-Two Thirds Cubic Feet of snow (1.667 Cu-Ft)
20,351,232,000 * 1.667 = 33,918,720,000 Cubic Feet of snow.
At 5.05 Gallons per CuFt, that means that there will be 171,289,536,000 gallons of water that will run off when it all melts. That is 171.3 BILLION gallons.
If we add in Beaver (434 SqMi), Butler (789), Armstrong (653), Westmoreland (1,025) and Washington (857) Counties, we get a total of 1,053,289,297,337 (1.05 Trillion) Gallons of water runoff.
As a point in comparison, The confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at The Point flows an average of 174,730 gallons per second, or 15,096,672,000 (15.09 billion) gallons per day.
So the total snow melt for the region will be about 70 times greater then the average daily flow of the Three Rivers.
So even if the snow melts off over the course of 70 days, it will still DOUBLE the volume of water in the rivers, ASSUMING NONE GETS DIRECTLY ABSORBED BY THE GROUND (which isn't likely).
And again, I'm just doing this with common sense and statistics from Wikipedia... so if I'm worn, let me know ;) :D
This looks good except, where did the "5.05 gallons per cubic foot" figure come from? There are about 7.5 gallons in a cubic foot of water, but a foot of snow generally melts to under an inch of water - maybe an inch for this snow since it was pretty wet/dense.
The average-density "packed powder" snow is approximately 220,000 gallons of water per acre-foot, or 5.05 Gallons per Cubic Foot (As opposed to 7.48 gallons of liquid water per cubic foot) or about 2/3rds the density of liquid water.
Allegheny County has ~730 Square Miles of land area, not counting bodies of water. That is 20,351,232,000 square feet.
The average depth of snow, on the ground, as of 6pm tonight was 20 inches. That means for every square foot of snow, there is One-and-Two Thirds Cubic Feet of snow (1.667 Cu-Ft)
20,351,232,000 * 1.667 = 33,918,720,000 Cubic Feet of snow.
At 5.05 Gallons per CuFt, that means that there will be 171,289,536,000 gallons of water that will run off when it all melts. That is 171.3 BILLION gallons.
If we add in Beaver (434 SqMi), Butler (789), Armstrong (653), Westmoreland (1,025) and Washington (857) Counties, we get a total of
1,053,289,297,337 (1.05 Trillion) Gallons of water runoff.
As a point in comparison, The confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at The Point flows an average of 174,730 gallons per second, or 15,096,672,000 (15.09 billion) gallons per day.
So the total snow melt for the region will be about 70 times greater then the average daily flow of the Three Rivers.
So even if the snow melts off over the course of 70 days, it will still DOUBLE the volume of water in the rivers, ASSUMING NONE GETS DIRECTLY ABSORBED BY THE GROUND (which isn't likely).
And again, I'm just doing this with common sense and statistics from Wikipedia... so if I'm worn, let me know ;) :D
(Bah, sorry for the multiple edits)
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But it's still fun to think about a trillion gallons of water laying around on the ground ;) :D
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