Tiebreaker of a sort

Usage examples of runoff.

Except for the largest of them, the deluge of glacial runoff could change the course of a river from one season to the next as easily as the ice hill pingos of winter melted into the bogs of summer.

In the spring, though it was inundated with heavier runoff and icy patches which threatened footing, the Sharamudoi -- both the chamois-hunting Shamudoi, and the river-dwelling Ramudoi, who formed their opposite half -- scampered up and down like the agile goatlike antelope that inhabited the steep terrain.

During the runoff, the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who resides in Brooklyn, threw his backing behind the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael Party.

Recently, their numbers had been dwindlingthey were victims of overfishing and pollution from PCBs, pesticides and phosphates from agricultural runoff and many of the survivors were manifesting tumors, ulcers and even bizarre genetic mutations.

Gradually, though, overfishing and fertilizer runoff had reduced their numbers.

The runoff from the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, clear and cool, tumbled into Potlicker Creek and many others that ultimately rolled into the James River, the first river in the New World to nourish an English colony, which survived back in 1607.

A deep, narrow creek carried the mountain runoff down to Potlicker Creek.

Occasional cascades of runoff splattered down to pool on the narrow ledge where she walked before they spilled over into the darkness below.

It charged the South Florida Water Management District with pumping filthy farm runoff into Everglades National Park.

Even in its quieter moods, the surging stream, foaming down the middle of a rock-strewn floodplain many times wider than itself, had the greenish, cloudy cast of glacial runoff.

The heavy spring runoff had washed down fresh nodules of flint from the chalk deposits of higher elevations and left them stranded on the floodplain.

Spock and his work crew far less time to crack off the thick rind of flowstone that had built up around the alien transporter unit through uncounted millennia of being dripped on by runoff from the natural caves overhead.

Many years ago we built a water catchment in a ravine outside the village, to trap runoff for our cattle, and we hid in there during the bombing.

The steep arroyos would soon be bursting with runoff, and the soaking of ready-to-mow alfalfa fields would start.

The only time that stream would ever be strong enough to carry a body was during the second week of spring thaw when the runoff from the balds and Coastal Ranges was at its height—Drey knew that.