Holy crap, flooding in the Northeast US

Have you guys checked your news stations? I am in the middle of it and even I didn’t realize it was this bad. 17 people have died in the last couple of weeks and major interstate highways are being closed. Seems like Pennsylvania is closed… The whole state, that is. :slight_smile:

My friend’s basement is flooded. My SO’s basement parking is under 5 inches of water.

I just went out for lunch and the rain is coming down so hard that the calves of my jeans are soaked, even though I was carrying an umbrella.

I sound flippant but I am more amazed than anything else. We generally get…er…I think it’s 24 inches of precipitation per year. I don’t know how much it’s been lately but it’s been crazy.

Does that mean I don’t have to go to work tonight? :smiley:

Seriously, I’m in the same boat (no pun…) it has rained and rained and RAINED but I haven’t had any problems. It’s 32 miles to work, thru some low-lying areas, but nothing. Just torrential downpours you can’t see 5 feet in. Maureen showed me an article yesterday where they’re evacuating Wilkes-Barre. :eek:

I wish! I just got another e-mail from the SO whose building is about 20 feet away from the river. He says that the river is getting higher than the banks now. I said “Maybe you should get the hell out of Dodge!”

here is one article:

Pa. keeps fingers crossed for floods’ ebb

Another from new Jersey:

Northeast floodwaters slowly ebb

Here’s about some of the dead:
Flooding in Northeast Leaves 10 Dead

Closer to Home:
Two dead, hundreds evacuated as major flooding hits upstate NY

Right in my backyard
Rainy weather dries up business

:eek: Take care you northeast Dopers. We had major flooding here in 1994. It is not anything to take lightly. Please take it seriously when you hear stuff like don’t drive in places where there is water over the road. I’ve heard of too many people dying doing stuff like that. Here’s hoping for the end of rain and drying out soon.

I pride myself on being among the first it hit. Yes, last weekend, I was in Western MD on a scouting trip. It was about 100 degrees during the day and Friday night the skies opened up like a vicious fire-hose.

Our tent survived Friday night, but by Saturday, a park ranger came into out camp & said “Severe storms are coming that will make last night look like a dry day. Oh, there’s an official flash-flood warning and you folks are camped in a flash-flood area.” :eek: I took a look over at my ‘On Sale at COSTCO’ brand Coleman tent, with two poles already wrapped in duct tape, and I told my son we were leaving early. I still remember all the fathers saying how we ‘wimped out’ (wasn’t just me; half the pack left).

I drove home like a man with a mission, just ahead of the storm the whole way. When it got here this week, it bombed us with rain. (Yesterday, Newsradio 88 reported 82 miles of Rt 17 under water :eek: )

On the bright side, my house isn’t in a flood zone and my new tent from Campmore (Its a Eureka!) is more than up to the challenge for our next camping trip.

There’s been a lot of rain in Wisconsin since spring, but it’s not as bad as in the Northeast. A few days ago a storm stalled over the Lake Wisconsin area, and dropped four inches in maybe 15 minutes, they were to expect another couple inches before it moved on. I’ve had about three instances of a couple inches in a ten minute period with half inch hail covering the ground. The Poynette area was devestated by the same storm that flooded Lake Wisconsin. They had inches of hail on the ground when it was done. The news interviewed a farmer in the Poynette area 44 hours after the storm. He still had piles of hail in the fields. The Apple place on the way to Poynette won’t have anything this year, including fresh produce.

I’m heading up to my place in the Catskills in a couple of hours. I’m upstream from the larger creeks and rivers and the large scale flooding, but there’s any number of things that can go wrong up there. I had a bad feeling last weekend, so I stowed a bunch of stuff in the basement in higher spots but who knows. This could be worse than anything I’ve seen in my few years up there.

The entire building I work in had its network connection with HQ disrupted by all the rain. We couldn’t do our regular jobs from Monday morning until about 3:00 yesterday afternoon. 'Net access was unreliable and most sites wouldn’t come up; for me, the Dope was among those that wouldn’t.

Oh dear. I don’t watch the news anymore, and once in a while I miss something important. My dad and his family live right in the middle of Mercer County! Their house is high, though I wonder if they’re marooned there, as it’s downhill all around them. Off to send an email…

Can I just tack on and say ‘damn straight’?

We had a firefighter die last week here in NE Ohio after a rescue mission of two teenagers who decided they could drive through a flooded area :mad: . The teens survived. The firefighter didn’t, and unfortunately, his death is on tape.

And my sister, who should know better at her age, thought the same thing during floods that hit VA during a hurricane in 2004. Thank God she made it out alive, but her car was swept away.

If cars were meant to be driven through water, they’d have flotation devices built in.

E.

I’m SO glad I moved back to Nevada (although we get floods here, too). My friend that I lived with out there showed me a picture of the Reading Area Community College, which is right next to the Schuylkill River. Fun stuff, the bottom floor is half underwater.

Meanwhile, you guys were getting rained out, and Nevada was burning to the ground. Woot!

~Tasha

This is terrible. It’s bad enough for the people living there but this is the worst time for this to happen. I mean, I have folks in Pennsylvania and it looks like our Fourth of July family reunion will have to be called off.

Thank you, y’all down there. on the tail end of some nasty thunderstorms today
In all seriousness, I hope everyone on the board (and everyone they know) is okay. hugs

On the flip side, here in North Texas (Collin County just north of Dallas) over the last three months (our rainy season) we’ve had the following amounts of rain.

April - 1 inch
May - 1 inch
June - 1/3 inch
I think that other regions are just being stingy. They need to learn to share. Please!!

PS

Keep your children away from fast moving streams. One slip and they are gone!