August 27, 2011

Direct hit

Brickmuppet says that there was "a break in the storm about an hour ago"... which means he took a direct hit by the eye.

He also says that they are forecasting 16-21 inches of rain. I can't even imagine anything like that. But I believe it. The storm is sitting right on the coast, sucking water out of the Gulf Stream and delivering it like a conveyer belt onto Virginia. (And everything else.)

When I was living in Massachusetts, one time we had 6 inches of rain in one day, and there was ridiculous flooding all over the place. I was living in Arlington Heights, which is in a valley. The stream that owns that valley is tiny and usually runs about as much water as the creek in my back yard. But after that rain storm, it went out of its banks and started running down Mass Ave. Which was pretty exciting.

Even so, that's a mere moistening compared to what Brickmuppet is going through. The flooding is going to be terrible.

UPDATE: By the way, this video is amazing to watch.

UPDATE: I was wrong. It wasn't the eye.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in linky at 03:15 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 193 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Imagine the sky falling. And falling, and falling and falling.  During Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, I was in the "epicenter" of three giant meso-cyclones, essentially eddies in the wind currents, that it spun off.  These parked themselves over the east and north sides of the city, and did not move for over 24 hours.

We had 36 inches of rain in those 24 hours, 24 of it in the first 12. No wind though.  It just came straight down, so hard and fast that it literally could not run off fast enough.  The bad part was no one expected it -- even NOAA had stopped making forecasts hours before it hit because it wasn't even a tropical storm anymore--it was a tropical depression.

I was trapped in my house for two days; Dr. Heinous had to slog home through hip deep water to get home after being trapped all night at a bar.

Posted by: ubu at August 28, 2011 09:33 AM (GfCSm)

2 That was some pretty impressive flooding. It got up onto our lawn before it peaked; our house was a little south of the San Jacinto, which ordinarily never ever ever ever floods. Neighbors down the street had feet of water in their houses. Some of the people in the subdivision had two stories underwater...

Took days to get the city back up and running, not so much because it all flooded (it didn't) but because the drains were so full that the bits that were flooded just didn't drain off. Most of the freeways were rivers. My brother went out to see one and got hit with a fire ant clump. (Moral, don't walk in flood water in the South!)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 28, 2011 10:53 AM (j42B4)

3 There are worse places to be trapped. (Than a bar.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 28, 2011 01:32 PM (+rSRq)

4 Once they run out of booze, morale starts dropping rapidly.

Posted by: Boviate at August 28, 2011 05:59 PM (RPpft)

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