Jump to content

Rain...


thistle

Recommended Posts

Is this rain ever going to end? I had a huge crop of figs, that is now a mushy mess, enjoyed by the ants & wasps-I went out, between bouts of rain, to see if anything could be salvaged. My backyard is an enormous mudslide....I hope our sump pump hangs in there...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is this rain ever going to end? I had a huge crop of figs, that is now a mushy mess, enjoyed by the ants & wasps-I went out, between bouts of rain, to see if anything could be salvaged. My backyard is an enormous mudslide....I hope our sump pump hangs in there...

Look on the bright side, at the rate we're going, a plague of locusts will eat the figs before the ants and wasps get to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not even crazy about the figs, unlike one of my dogs who jumps on the trees to pull them off-he's going to be more upset. My kids are out playing in the rain, they think it's a blast, I had a friend who had her basement flood & an electrical fire yesterday-I finally summoned the courage to go down & listen, to see if the sump pump was working. It's kind of fun, like being on a sailboat...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

doubled my commute time home, had to re-route twice to avoid water over roads where I've never seen it get on the roads before. But had plenty of drive time to imagine dinner and came home and made pork tenderloin medallions on a bed of garlic spinach and draped with a sauce made with mostly onions, chopped tomatoes, thyme and butter. It was a good way to end the day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We live in Reston. According to WeatherBug at Terraset Elementary school's station which is several hundred yards behind our house, we have had 6.55 inches of rain since midnight and almost ten inches since Monday night (72 hours total). If I throw in the previous storm we are looking at approximately twelve inches in ten days. One foot...One Foot!!! I have never seen this much rain in my lifetime...and I am old. It also looks like it might rain...again.

This afternoon, hourly, I had a routine: looking at each individual window, also walls, doors, french doors and even walking through the basement looking for anything liquid trailing down a wall. I was convinced water would come in.

And, finally, it did. A trickle that trailed slowly down a basement wall. When I found it I had confirmation that my obsession, my nightmarishly myopic-phobia if you will-was well founded. The stream or the fear thereof was real! I could have cheered! Or, realistically, cried immediately after shouting that I was right!

As I type this a red bulletin is trailing across the top of the television that I am watching Thursday night football on. Something about another flash flood warning or another...well, another warning. Of some kind, of any kind. Anything to confirm my obsessive fear that the world is coming to an end, right here, right now in Reston. As I type this. In fact I will be lucky if my laptop and I are both not washed out of our bedroom chair, floating down the creek...without a last glass of serious wine to say goodbye.

Does anyone else share my fear on a night like this?

Has it really stopped raining somewhere, anywhere in the D. C. area? Or, should I open the bottle of amarone?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We live in Reston. According to WeatherBug at Terraset Elementary school's station which is several hundred yards behind our house, we have had 6.55 inches of rain since midnight and almost ten inches since Monday night (72 hours total). If I throw in the previous storm we are looking at approximately twelve inches in ten days. One foot...One Foot!!! I have never seen this much rain in my lifetime...and I am old. It also looks like it might rain...again.

This afternoon, hourly, I had a routine: looking at each individual window, also walls, doors, french doors and even walking through the basement looking for anything liquid trailing down a wall. I was convinced water would come in.

And, finally, it did. A trickle that trailed slowly down a basement wall. When I found it I had confirmation that my obsession, my nightmarishly myopic-phobia if you will-was well founded. The stream or the fear thereof was real! I could have cheered! Or, realistically, cried immediately after shouting that I was right!

As I type this a red bulletin is trailing across the top of the television that I am watching Thursday night football on. Something about another flash flood warning or another...well, another warning. Of some kind, of any kind. Anything to confirm my obsessive fear that the world is coming to an end, right here, right now in Reston. As I type this. In fact I will be lucky if my laptop and I are both not washed out of our bedroom chair, floating down the creek...without a last glass of serious wine to say goodbye.

Does anyone else share my fear on a night like this?

Has it really stopped raining somewhere, anywhere in the D. C. area? Or, should I open the bottle of amarone?

Open that bottle of wine and drink to those folks in Texas who have either been burned out of their homes or are waiting on the word to evacuate, like a friend of mine is doing right this minute. There seems to be an end to the rain fairly soon, but there is no end to that drought. As bad as it is here, it sure could be a lot worse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a former denizen of Louisiana, this rainfall reminds me of home. I remember the most extreme example, 1978, when it rained 10 inches in one hour. And that was not during a hurricane. Our street, Prytania Street, between Soniat and Robert, flooded (as did the rest of the city). Water came into my car to the dashboard. I called work to tell them I was not coming in, and my boss sent someone in a pickup truck to pick me up on St. Charles Avenue to drive me to work. I have photos of people boating in front of my house.

This too shall pass. It's just water. Nice clean water. Your plants in the yard are loving it.

It could be much much worse. Your house could be on fire and you could be surrounded by thousands of acres of burning desert. Count your blessings.

As for me, I am blessing Hurricane Irene, which motivated me to have a couple of trees close to the house cut down, and the gutters cleaned out, and the larder stocked, and batteries and lanterns and battery operated radio in place. Thank you, Irene. Because of you, we got ready for Hurricane Lee. And will now be ready for the next iteration of Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse or whatever else the Weather Gods throw our way.

Drink what you will but not so much that you don't keep your wits available for emergencies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They closed part of the beltway. I live with someone who grew up here, and another friend who has been here for 35 years was consulted, and neither remembers the beltway being closed for rain. I've got two cats for the ark...

I drove a cab in the mid '70's part time for Barwood and remember the inside loop of the beltway being closed between Connecticut and Georgia avenue because of heavy rain near the Mormon Temple. What made it even worse is that East West highway was closed too as was Western avenue because of flooding where each crossed Rock Creek park. That night I ended up making it home by driving across Randolph road. I remember the night specifically because at the time I was the evening dispatcher for the Bethesda based cab company. That is the only time that I know of-in Maryland-dating to when the beltway opened in the early '60's that it closed for rain.

Interestingly as I type this WRC is reporting that the Beltway was closed in two places today near Eisenhower Avenue and also near the Mixing Bowl. But not where it closed in the '70's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They closed part of the beltway.

Some time in the early '90s (I think) we had a big damn snowstorm dump something like a foot or foot and a half of snow; two days later temperatures soared into the 50s as another front came through, with heavy rains. The snow melted fast, and the flooding was spectacular. I'm not sure if the Beltway later closed at River Rd, but only one lane was getting by when I was there, and it was pretty deep.

I had collected my rain gear and gone to Great Falls to hike. There was only one other car in the parking lot; it belonged to the docent in the tavern, who told me I had about an hour to get out to Olmstead Island before the bridges were closed. Imagine having Great Falls all to yourself. It was spectacular, even if the visibility was only about 30 feet in the fog.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was pretty bad in Falls Church when I went to pick little man up from school. At 5:45pm, trash bins were flooding past me, in a wave of brown water because of the nearby sand/mud mixture collected in the water. I am reminded of a childhood memory during a bad typhoon in Taiwan when I saw massive rushes of water passing my car down Slate Run.

Parts of Arlington flooded and I heard many sewer drains backed up in both Fairfax and Arlington Counties.

Fairfax County schools are closed today.

I hope you all are doing alright.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was driving out I-66 to the Dulles Toll Road early yesterday afternoon, and was surprised to see traffic moving at a crawl beginning before Route 123 (which is still inside the beltway). The reason? At the underpass, the left lane was blocked off by an emergency vehicle, with about two feet of water in it; the right lane was squeezing by through about a four-inch puddle.

May I assume Rock Creek is now Rock River?

P.S. This flooding may be worse, but I'll never forget standing on top of Chain Bridge in late 1996, and seeing the Potomac River positively raging below - tall trees on the eastern side were completely engulfed in the rapids, whitewater extended from bank to bank, and (at night) it seemed as if the water level was dangerously close to the bridge - and this is a high bridge. I saw branches and other items rushing by at what must have been over twenty miles per hour in what was surely a deadly current. Does anyone besides me remember this? I think we had a heavy rainstorm after a heavy snowstorm, which caused a double dose of water to penetrate the ground.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was driving out I-66 to the Dulles Toll Road early yesterday afternoon, and was surprised to see traffic moving at a crawl beginning before Route 123 (which is still inside the beltway). The reason? At the underpass, the left lane was blocked off by an emergency vehicle, with about two feet of water in it; the right lane was squeezing by through about a four-inch puddle.

May I assume Rock Creek is now Rock River?

P.S. This flooding may be worse, but I'll never forget standing on top of Chain Bridge in late 1996, and seeing the Potomac River positively raging below - tall trees on the eastern side were completely engulfed in the rapids, whitewater extended from bank to bank, and (at night) it seemed as if the water level was dangerously close to the bridge - and this is a high bridge. I saw branches and other items rushing by at what must have been over twenty miles per hour in what was surely a deadly current. Does anyone besides me remember this? I think we had a heavy rainstorm after a heavy snowstorm, which caused a double dose of water to penetrate the ground.

There's a water mark on the Kennedy Center that you can see when you drive behind it. It's four or five feet above the bottom of the building. I'm not sure what storm that came from but I remember the one you mentioned and the aftermath with the current.

We're now up to 10.37" of rain since Monday according to the Weather Bug station near our house. Just unbelievable stuff.

Tomorrow, assuming it is dry, I'll park across from the Old Anglers Inn and walk along the C & O canal to Great Falls which is almost two and one half miles in each direction. It should be a historic walk-not for the distance but rather what I'll see. I'd suggest, Don, that you may be able to revisit your Chain Bridge memory tomorrow afternoon also.

We've probably had six months of rain in four days...

It also seems that every "isolated" storm that is being forecast seems to show up over our house.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone besides me remember this? I think we had a heavy rainstorm after a heavy snowstorm, which caused a double dose of water to penetrate the ground.

Yep. I posted about it in the thread "weather" over in shopping and cooking.

{Ed. note: Threads now merged into this one; relevant post is above.}

Edited by leleboo
thread merge
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep. I posted about it in the thread "weather" over in shopping and cooking.

It was probably 1995? We were living in Garrett County, so we just got huge major amounts of snow after huge major amounts of snow. I don't think it all melted till May. The first storm happened in March as I recall. We missed a whole week of school, which is major up there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Going to play mini golf at Cameron Run Regional Park was a *great* call at 4:15 PM today - not only was it perfect weather, but we had the entire course to ourselves, so much so that we began a second round before anyone else arrived. (For the record: Matt wins round one, Dad wins round two, Dad wins tournament based on total score (including shooting 3-under on the back nine in round two)).

But the point I'm making here is that if you look closely at this picture of the greenery surrounding Hole #1, there are three DEAD FISH.

post-2-0-73312500-1315605312_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finally scoured my patio of the leaves and mud and debris from the storms and take great satisfaction in knowing that I have disrupted and/or ended the lives of millions of creepy, crawly, tedious, blood-sucking insects that seemed to have hunkered down at my home for the multi-legged equivalent of a kegger. Mwahahaha....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...