Local news

Storms put the Connecticut River over its banks in Hadley

Four inches of rain in two days closed River Drive and soaked about 300 acres of farmland.

By Dana Whitcomb · August 7, 2026

The Connecticut River came over its banks in Hadley early Wednesday after two days of rain, closing River Drive between Cemetery Road and the Route 9 bridge and putting water across roughly 300 acres of farmland on the meadows.

The National Weather Service gauge at the Hadley boat ramp recorded 4.11 inches between Monday morning and Wednesday morning, with 2.6 inches of that falling in about seven hours Tuesday night. The river crested Wednesday at 3:40 p.m. at 21.4 feet, which is 1.4 feet over flood stage and the highest reading in Hadley since April 2019.

No injuries have been reported. Two vehicles were pulled out of standing water on River Drive on Tuesday night, both after their drivers had already walked out.

"The barricades went up at nine and both cars went around them after eleven," said Hadley fire chief Owen Brzezinski. "It looks like four inches of water on a road you drive every day. It is not four inches, it is closer to two feet, and it is moving. Please stop doing this."

What the water is sitting on

The Hadley meadows are some of the best cropland in the state and they flood roughly every third spring, which growers plan around. August is a different problem. The corn, squash and late brassicas out there now are within weeks of harvest, and produce that has been under river water cannot be sold.

The state's rule is 120 days between flooding and harvest for crops where the edible part touches the ground or the water. For anything close to picking, that ends the season for that field.

Dale Kupiec, who farms 190 acres off River Drive, had about 40 acres under water Wednesday, most of it butternut squash and a block of sweet corn he was going to start cutting next week.

"The corn might stand up, if it drains fast and the ears stayed dry," Kupiec said Thursday, standing at the end of a row where the water had pulled back about thirty feet overnight. "The squash is gone. I know it is gone. I am going to walk it Saturday and confirm what I already know."

He put his own loss somewhere between $60,000 and $80,000 and said he has crop insurance on the corn and not on the squash.

The Hampshire County agricultural commission's rough count Thursday afternoon was 300 to 340 acres affected across nine Hadley farms, plus another 60 or so in Northampton near the oxbow. Those figures will move. The commission's Rennie Fabrizio said the real number comes in about ten days out, once growers can walk the fields and see what actually survived.

Roads and the rest of it

River Drive is closed from Cemetery Road to the Route 9 bridge, about 1.3 miles. Highway superintendent Tom Rakoczy said the shoulder washed out in two places near the boat ramp and that there is a stretch of undermining he wants a look at before anyone drives on it.

He expects to reopen it Monday or Tuesday. He would not promise Monday.

Bay Road stayed open. The low spot at Mill Valley Road had about six inches across it Tuesday night and was clear by Wednesday noon. In Northampton, the boat launch off Damon Road is closed until further notice, and the bike path is passable with mud on it between the Coolidge Bridge and the Hadley line.

Fourteen Hadley households lost power Tuesday night, all of them back by Wednesday morning. Three basements on Middle Street took water. The fire department pumped two of them.

Why it got over the bank

The valley had a wet July, about 5.9 inches against a normal of 3.8, so the ground was already carrying water when this system arrived. Runoff from the Deerfield and the Westfield fed in above Hadley, and the dam releases upriver in Vermont added to the peak Tuesday night.

The river dropped below flood stage Thursday around 6 a.m. and was at 17.8 feet Friday morning, still about three feet above where it sat last week. More rain is in the forecast for Sunday, an inch or less, and Brzezinski said an inch on this ground is worth more than an inch on dry ground.

Hadley last saw a real August flood in 2011. Older growers on the meadows tend to date things from that one, and several of them said Thursday that this is not that. In 2011 the water was in the second-floor windows of a house on River Drive.

"This is a bad week," Kupiec said. "That was a bad year. They are not the same thing and I would rather have this one."

What to do if you farm out there

The county agricultural commission is taking damage reports through Friday, August 21, by phone or through the form on the county website. Growers should photograph flooded fields with something in the frame for scale before they clear anything, and hold onto the photos. Federal disaster designation for Hampshire County depends on the acreage total, and Fabrizio said the reports are what produce that number.

The Hadley Selectboard meets Wednesday, August 19, at 7 p.m. at Town Hall on Middle Street, with the River Drive washout on the agenda. Road status is posted on the town website and on the highway department's recorded line, which Rakoczy updates each morning and again in the late afternoon.