Mapping Floods of Fenton River, an Ungauged Stream in Connecticut

Abstract

The study describes the modeling of flood events of an ungauged river by using recorded data from a neighboring watershed. The Fenton and Mount Hope Rivers are two tributaries of the Thames River in Northwest Connecticut, New England. The Fenton River was an ungauged stream until 2006, the Mount Hope River has stream discharges measurements since 1940. Due to the lack of discharge measurements in the Fenton River during the XX century, there is a huge uncertainty about the characteristics of past flood events. An analysis was conducted to map the most important floods in the Fenton River around the pump wells of the University of Connecticut (UConn) with simulated peak discharges applying the drainage-area ratio methodology using recorded peak discharges from the Mount Hope River in 1955, 2005 and, 2008. Flood maps of the Fenton River were generated applying a one-dimensional (1D) HEC-RAS model for the 1955, 2005, 2008 events and a simulated 2022 flood. The methodology shows that it is possible to simulate flood maps of past events using a neighboring watershed discharges.