Noonday Creek
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Noonday Creek is a stream that runs through northern Cobb County and into southern Cherokee County, Georgia. It begins northwest of Marietta and south of Kennesaw, near the northeast side of Kennesaw Mountain (part of a ridge dividing the county's two major watersheds). It flows east and northeast under U.S. 41 and Interstate 75, by Town Center at Cobb and under Interstate 575, then due north past the Noonday community, and across the county line into Woodstock, where it crosses Georgia 92.
At the northern end of Cobb County, it picks up more water from the Noonday Water Reclamation Facility, a sewage treatment plant serving Cobb and Cherokee. There is also now a large sewer line buried along most of the creek south (upstream) of the plant, seen as a treeless kudzu-covered flood plain, dotted with concrete mounds topped with manholes.
Because most of the trees have already been removed from along that side of the creek, the Noonday Creek Trail being built will have little further impact if a permeable surface is used. That trail will eventually extend along most of the Cobb part of the creek.
Noonday Creek is a tributary of the Little River, however, it now flows directly into Lake Allatoona just to the north of the Towne Lake community. Little Noonday Creek is its only officially-named tributary, flowing north from the northeast corner of Marietta and then northwestward, joining the main creek southwest of Noonday, at Noonday Creek Park. During heavy rains, the creek often floods the ballfields at the park, and increasingly so due to excessive runoff from heavy land development in the area.
[edit] Monitoring
There two USGS stream gauges on Noonday Creek, both operating since October 2000 and reporting via uplink to GOES weather satellites. The first is at Hawkins Store Road, at the south end of Noonday Creek Park. This is at , 895 feet or 272.8 meters AMSL, and has a watershed area of 24.3 square miles or 63km². The second is at Shallowford Road, just upstream (north) at the other end of the park, next to the entrance to the water treatment plant. This is at , 890 feet or 271.3 meters AMSL, with a watershed area of 33.6 square miles or 87km², including Little Noonday Creek. Both streamflow and stage (depth) are reported at both locations, with a rain gauge also at the latter. The National Weather Service does not issue river flood warnings or statements for this creek as it does for Sope Creek and others in the area, nor has it set an official flood stage for it. The highest the gauges can read is 12 feet or 3.6 meters.
The most major flood known to have occurred on Noonday Creek was in July 2005, when the outer bands of Hurricane Dennis followed Hurricane Cindy by just a few days. Massive rainfall occurred, particularly with Dennis, in less than 24 hours, sending the creek to more than 16 feet or nearly 5 meters late on July 10th. That is about ten times its normal depth or height, reaching beyond what FEMA and GDNR labeled its 100-year flood plain, largely because of excessive urbanization upstream.
