An online service courtesy of the Hopkinsville Surface and Stormwater Utility is catching on among property owners in the path of possible floods. These real-time river updates might also have uncovered a cresting pattern that will enable more accurate predictions of future flooding.

During the Tuesday night storm, electronic gages at four strategic spots along the Little River’s North and South forks reported moment-by-moment water levels as they have since being installed last September.

The data collected by the gages was consistent with data issued shortly after by the National Weather Service: the June 16 storm was nearly a 1000-year storm event.

In some areas, more than 6.6 inches of rain fell inside of four hours. The local standard for a 1000-year storm is 5.55 inches within three hours.

Naturally, a storm of such magnitude drew a lot of attention. Residents in flood-prone areas did their usual monitoring of the situation by tuning into media reports or driving to measuring spots along the river.

Property owners are increasingly turning to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Web site:  waterdata.usgs.gov/ky/nwis.

With the convenience of a computer or cell phone, weather watchers receive continuous updates of rainfall and river height. The user selects whether to display data as a line graph or as a table and whether focus to on a single day or on a longer trend across weeks and months.

City planner Dave Herndon said that several residents called the Hopkinsville-Christian County Planning Commission early on Wednesday to confirm the information they were observing on the Web site. Flood control workers have verified the readings as accurate, Herndon said.

The North Fork is monitored by a single gage placed near the Hopkinsville Water Environment Authority plant on North Main Street.

There are three gages on the South Fork: one was placed upstream near Little River Church Road, another was located on the eastern edge of town where the river crosses Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way section of the bypass and the final gage is actually in town along Fort Campbell Boulevard.

The last two gages are especially important because of growing evidence that the cresting time of one can predict the other.

Data from the recent storm showed that the river crested near the bypass at 19.79 feet around 4:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Seven hours later, the river crested near the boulevard gage at 17.21 feet.

The same seven-hour gap between crests showed up during an earlier storm on May 1 and 2 of this year. There’s not yet enough data on local floods to be able to say that this gap is more trend than coincidence. But should future data point to a trend, city officials will then be able to use crest measurements on the city perimeter to pinpoint the timing and severity of floods in areas where more residents would be affected.

Similarly, the crest height at one point could correlate with the crest height of the other, which allow for even more predictions.

The flash floods from the Tuesday storm hit at least four Hopkinsville homes. But the magnitude of the storm suggested a disaster could have occurred. In the past, 500-year storms have engulfed entire neighborhoods and posed a citywide disaster. This was a near 1000-year downpour.

Why the storm took a relatively light toll on Hopkinsville is best explained by the many flood control projects undertaken since the SSWU formed in 2006.

The utility uses the monthly fees it collects from residents to fund logjam removal, the excavation of a major drainage basin in the Sunset-Woodmont area and buyouts of homes in the flood zone.

All four homes reported to have flooded during the recent storm have already been targeted for flood control before the Tuesday storm. Two are in the process of being acquired for demolition and two are slated to benefit from ongoing and future drainage improvements.

The planning commission requests that all incidences of houses or garages being flooded be reported directly to their office. Call (270) 887-4285 or email dherndon@hccpc.com.

Of course, larger projects take priority over smaller, which is why some of the Master Drainage Plan’s measures won’t be initiated until next year. And the new system isn’t designed to defend against the flash floods that drop heavy rains in less than six hours.

What has been done, so far, seems to be effective. Fewer homes are being claimed by flood waters; major storms aren’t turning into major floods; and now, local officials and residents have a clearer of picture what the Little River is up to.