On Sunday night, May 11-12, a spring storm stalled over the Montclair area and pelted the community with an unforecast amount of rain. On the Friday before the storm, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted rainfall for the weekend of one-quarter to one-half inch per day; however, when the storm slowed and then stalled on Sunday night, Montclair experienced a rainfall accumulation of 6.5 inches. The impact of this storm on Lake Montclair was substantial but could have been far worse but for the efforts of Montclair’s management and maintenance staff.

By 10:00 p.m. Sunday, as the seriousness of the rainstorm became apparent, Jennifer Hughes, the Assistant General Manager, returned to Montclair from her home to begin an all night vigil monitoring the accumulating rainfall and its impact on Lake Montclair. By 11:30 p.m., Hughes was joined by MPOA Maintenance Director Jack Gilbert.

Together, Hughes and Gilbert tracked the rising level of Lake Montclair. By midnight, the water level reached one foot, 10 inches above the normal water level. At that time, Hughes and Gilbert, in consultation with Armstrong’s Regional Manager Larry Ellis and Montclair’s new General Manager Heather MacDonald, made the decision to open the manual gate at the primary spillway. Additionally, the lake siphon was automatically triggered by the rising water.

Despite the operation of both of these available tools for the rapid draw down of the Lake’s water level, the pelting rain continued to drive the water level up. By 4:10 a.m. Sunday morning, the lake water level reached the maximum height to which it would rise that night (three feet, eleven inches above normal). From that point on, the open spillway gate and the siphon were able to outmatch the falling rain and the Lake water level fell gradually through the balance of the morning to its normal level.

Because of the good decisions of Armstrong’s personnel, which were ratified by the dam engineer contacted by staff during the early hours of Sunday morning, the impact on Lake Montclair of the strong rain storm was managed without resort to the Board of Director’s Lake Montclair Emergency Action Plan (EAP). The EAP, by its terms, is not implemented unless the water level at the principal spillway at the Lake rises to four feet above normal.

As a result of the professional actions taken to protect Lake Montclair, there was never any danger of the Lake overflowing, damages to its dam, or of causing downstream harm: however, the rapid rise in the water level damaged or destroyed many of the privately-owned docks along the Lake shore. The Montclair Board of Directors is taking all steps possible under the MPOA governing documents and Prince William County ordinances to support the owners of these docks in their efforts to repair or replace their damaged or destroyed docks.