Talk:Great Falls (Housatonic River)

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Highest-Volume Waterfall in CT[edit]

In the spirit of transparency, I want to note that I could not find a published source that explicitly declared Great Falls to be the highest-volume waterfall in Connecticut. In fact, I also could not find any explicit resource whatsoever which ventured to order Connecticut's waterfalls by volume.

My claim that Great Falls is the highest-volume waterfall in Connecticut is derived by comparing measured waterflow figures from waterfalls (or, more generally in some cases, rivers that host waterfalls) throughout the state. These published waterflow statistics sufficiently support the claim, demonstrating that more water flows over Great Falls (18295 gal/sec) at its seasonal peak in the springtime than any other waterfall in the state. The nearest competitor for this superlative would seem to be Yantic Falls in Norwich. Despite being quite large (2566 gal/sec)^[1], it carries several times less water than Great Falls during peak flows.

The fact that the Housatonic River is oftentimes diverted upstream of the waterfall for power generation does complicate the "highest volume" superlative. However, it is typically not diverted during peak waterflow in the spring. Furthermore, all waterfalls are prone to fluctuations in waterflow, whether naturally-occurring or human-influenced or both. Thus, the superlative of the "highest volume waterfall in Connecticut" requires only that Great Falls hosts the greatest volume of water at some point during the year than any other waterfall. That is sufficiently demonstrated by statistics. Jgcoleman (talk) 18:05, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Ellis, David A. "Yantic Falls: Norwich, CT - Statistics". Connecticut Waterfalls. Retrieved 3 November 2015.

[1] Ellis, David A. "Yantic Falls: Norwich, CT - Statistics". Connecticut Waterfalls. Retrieved 3 November 2015.

[1]