and the rains came....

* AT 313 AM EST...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
A BAND OF HEAVY RAIN SHOWERS MOVING NORTHEAST AT 45 MPH ACROSS
THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS AND FOOTHILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA. THESE
SHOWERS WERE PRODUCING RAINFALL AT RATES AROUND ONE INCH PER
HOUR...AND THIS HEAVY RAIN WILL AFFECT LOCATIONS THAT HAVE
ALREADY RECEIVED 1 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN IN THE PAST 24 HOURS.
* MANY STREAMS AND CREEKS ACROSS THE REGION WILL RISE TO
BANKFULL...AND A FEW COULD FLOOD LOW LYING AREAS. DEEP
PONDING OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN LOW SPOTS IN ROADWAYS.
RUNOFF FROM THIS STORM WILL CAUSE RAPID RISES ALONG CREEKS AND
STREAMS...ROADS AND ROADSIDE CULVERTS. THE HEAVY RAINS COULD ALSO
TRIGGER ROCK AND MUDSLIDES IN STEEP TERRAIN. BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS
AT NIGHT WHEN IT IS HARDER TO RECOGNIZE THE DANGERS OF FLOODS. BE
PREPARED TO MOVE UP TO HIGHER GROUND SHOULD FLOODING DEVELOP. DO NOT
STAY IN AREAS SUBJECT TO FLOODING WHEN WATER BEGINS RISING...AND DO
NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE THROUGH FLOODED ROADWAYS.


it has been raining here for nearly 24 hours or more....the rain is just starting to cause torrents in the yard. during the 2004 flood you could hear the boulders in the creek moving and hitting each other..that is a sound i will never forget...people still underestimate the power of water.

 

Are you taking weather lessons from David ?

True about flooding tho---people act like idiots in dangerous water conditions.
A rushing river or flooded road ain't a bath tub folks.

 

We had freezing drizzle and light rain last night. Made me think twice about trekking out. The sidewalks were glazed over with a very thin layer of ice. For the first time in almost 20 years, NYC was under a freezing rain advisory. Before 1993, the last time NYC had freezing rain was in the '70s. I've never seen freezing rain before yesterday... and I sure as hell hope I don't see it again. Can't imagine what those people up in NE went through a few weeks back!

 

Absolutely the worst storm I ever lived through was the ice storm in Maine and Canada about 8 years back or so.

Ice storms are worse, much worse than snow storms.

Five feet of snow with 30' drifts? No problem

Three inches of rcok hard ice coating every surface?

Total disaster.

That ice storm came to us in the form of a freezing fog, BTW.

Why is that important?

Because that means that the ice not only covered the tops of things, but the sides and bottoms of everything, too.

Global weirding at its best.

 

The worst one here was this year - Tropical Storm Fay, who dumped 24+ inches of rain on my neighborhood in 24 hours. The flooding was quite severe.

 

We have a thick layer of ice everyhwere here from the rain atop the snow and freezing rain on top of those rains on top of the snows in the past month. Our driveway is a three inch ice slab at this point.

 

I was shocked when the name Fay wasn't retired. That storm made no less than 6 landfalls and just crawled. No computer model was able to track that storm correctly because it was a freak storm. That is my meteorological definition of it - a FREAK storm. NO storm has ever done what Fay did. It hit Florida at exactly the right time, the right place and wasn't strong enough to move itself and had to be moved by the steering winds. There were several high pressure systems around the storm blocking it from going anywhere. Goes to show you how many variables are in meteorology itself. The setup for this storm has not happened anytime in recorded history, which is over 100 years for meteorology. It wasn't a strong storm by any means, it just couldn't move anywhere and was literally parked over Florida for a week. Thank God it wasn't a big storm.

 

yeah, we hit our 100 year flood records here.

 

I would love to see somebody do a study of the trend of "record breaking weather events"

I suspect what we'd be seeing is a dramtic increase in record breaking weather events happening the world over.

Now admittedly, we have only a brief amount of records, but they do go back through about five generations, so if nothing else, they'll tell us that what we've come to expect is not what we should continue counting on.

 

Well, not to be disarmingly anti-alarmist, but there is a reason they are called the "hundred year flood plains."