Tuesday, March 16, 2010

WW - Raging Waters in Pepperell, MA

A week ago, I took a series of photos of an old abandoned paper mill in Pepperell, Massachusetts for a photo study.  The mill closed in 2002.



Little did I know that a week later after several days of endless rain, the Nashua River which runs past the mill would reach record high levels.



I would say that the river is a good ten feet higher on the side of that building!

Around the building, there is a ledge which leads to a red door.



Today, the ledge was under water, the river blew out the door and flooded the building.



Down the river, there is an hydro electric plant which used to power the mill and now provides renewable energy.



There was plenty of electricity to be made today!



The river flowing past the dam under the Main Street bridge was already relatively high last week, as often it just dribbles over during dry periods.



The river was raging today!  Around the other side of the red building, it was flowing into the street.



The force of the water was incredible.  There were tons of people watching in awe (including this engineer who was late coming back from lunch).

Some photography notes:  I was lucky to get several shots at the same angle, but next time I will bring my iPhone so I can see the previous shots and set up the comparison shots exactly the same. Hopefully the previous shots would be available either online on Flickr or sync'ed to the phone.  As is, I had to use two cameras because the SLR could not take the shots of the mill through the chain link fence.  And the point and shoot was instrumental in capturing these amazing videos:





Visit by Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom or 7 Clown Circus (wordful) for more participants.

15 comments :

Pam said...

Oh My Goodness. Wow. Its like the river is letting the old mill know who's in charge. Scary. Very Scary. Beautiful photographs!

Momstart said...

WOW, that is quite a bit of rain. I love the old mill and the photos you took.

Upstatemamma said...

Somehow the rain makes it look that much more interesting!! Very cool pictures!

Cecily R said...

Wow. ASide from the water, that building has such character! Really, really cool.

Night Owl Mama said...

thanks for sharing/ kinda scary but beautiful all at the same time

Unknown said...

Yikes that's scary. Never under estimate the power of water!

Joy@TPMG said...

Wow! The water looks so powerful. Great photos.

Anonymous said...

WOW is all I can say! Great pictures you captured though!

Happy WW!

Here's mine:

http://happilyblended.com/2010/03/wordless-wednesday-3/

I am Harriet said...

Wow- amazing photos.

http://harrietandfriends.com/2010/03/smart-wanna-iq-test/

Serendipity is Sweet said...

That is truly amazing. So cool that you were able to capture it.

Marice said...

awesome shots! can we have some of that water to fill in our dam? ;)

u may view mine here

Stacey said...

Wow. That's some serious water! Great pictures!

Run DMT said...

That is insane! You caught some great pictures and an amazing video too.

Carrie and Troy Keiser said...

Wow! What a difference a week and a lot of rain! Great shots!

linda said...

You capyured some histioucal scenes of the raging water at Pepperell,MA. At this moment, the Red river near by Fargo and Grand Forks, your birth place, rises 21 ft above the flood level. I hope it will be OK for folks leve in North Dakota.