Return Frequency of Flood Events in Cayuga Lake Tributaries

Increased impervious cover in a subwatershed has the potential to affect both quantity and quality of the surface drainage network. Structural practices to control urban runoff rely on three basic mechanisms to treat runoff: infiltration, filtration, and detention. Practices are sized based on treating runoff from a storm of a specified probability of occurrence. As part of the watershed planning process, the magnitude of streamflow of defined recurrence intervals has been calculated. These discharges are tabulated below.

Return frequency of flood events in Cayuga Lake tributaries. Calculated using the Log Pearson Type 3 distribution from historical annual maximum flows in Cayuga Inlet (1937 -1999) and Fall Creek (1925 - 1999) (Bedient and Huber 1992). Data in cfs.
Tributary 1 year 2 year 5 year 10 year 25 year 100 year
Fall Creek 934 2185 3201 3976 5073 6973
Salmon 671 1569 2299 2856 3643 5008
Unmonitored 593 1386 2030 2522 3218 4423
Taughannock 306 1062 1666 2108 2709 3684
Inlet 160 556 872 1103 1417 1928
Paines 114 267 391 486 620 852
Great Gully 72 251 393 497 639 869
Yawger 65 226 354 448 576 784
Trumansburg 63 220 345 437 562 764
Sheldrake 62 145 213 264 337 463
Yawger Trib 50 173 272 344 442 601
Gulf 47 109 160 198 253 348
Mack 41 96 141 176 224 308
Hicks 39 91 134 166 212 292
Ledyard (Levanna) 27 95 149 188 242 329
Willow 15 53 83 105 136 184
68 (Interlaken) 15 35 51 63 80 110
Glenwood 9.0 31 49 62 79 108
Renwick 9.4 22 32 40 51 70
Williams 5.6 19 30 38 49 67
103 (south Willow) 4.9 17 27 34 43 59
106 (north Glenwood) 5.1 12 17 22 28 38
Paines Trib 1.4 3.3 4.9 6.0 7.7 11
Indian 2.0 7.0 11 14 18 24

Discharge from the category of unmonitored tributaries would not enter Cayuga Lake at a single location, so it is not appropriate to use these estimated flows for sizing practices to control nonpoint source pollution from the drainage areas around the lake shoreline.

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CLW IO 2004