The headwaters of Meadow Brook were sourced from an area of springs and wetland bogs at the base of Moosic Mountain.
The natural habitat and drainage functions of these headwaters were destroyed by the Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Gypsy Grove Colliery beginning in the 1860’s.
It then turns southwest for a few tenths of a mile, briefly regaining its surface flow before losing it again and gaining it once more.
[1] Meadow Brook joins the Lackawanna River 11.83 miles (19.04 km) upriver of its mouth.
[3] Several combined sewer overflows in the watershed of Meadow Brook have been identified and removed since the 1990s.
[3] At its mouth, the peak annual discharge of Meadow Brook has a 10 percent chance of reaching 630 cubic feet per second (18 m3/s).
[1] Meadow Brook has been so severely affected by urban development or historic mining that it no longer resembles a stream.
[7] The source of Meadow Brook used to be a series of springs and seeps on a ridge near the base of the Moosic Mountains.
[4] Two stone arch bridges cross Meadow Brook in the Forest Hill Cemetery, where the stream still maintains a natural channel.
The Keystone Landfill and Interstate 81 are the main land uses in the vicinity of the watershed's upper reaches.
[6] A reach of Meadow Brook from the Oral School to Sanderson Avenue was culvertized in the 1880s, during the development of the Green Ridge neighborhood.
In 1909, the Pennsylvania Coal Company diverted water from the stream into the Underwood Mine Drainage Tunnel.
In the 1960s, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection diverted more water to construct boreholes leading to the Underwood Tunnel.
[4] The stream's culvert system between Penn Avenue and its mouth was rebuilt in 2004 in a $6 million project funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
As of the early 2000s, more than twenty white pines, hemlocks, and red oaks with ages over 150 years inhabited this area.
[3] In 1997, the area along a reach of Meadow Brook was noted to be suitable for small mammals such as squirrels, rabbits, and mice.