Water, Water all around:

Well, what Irene didn't dump on us, this current storm is. Almost every road to get home from inside the capital beltway is closed, people are being evac'ed from their homes on what are essentially little more than drainage ditches under normal conditions. I made it home by getting through certain low-points before the cops could come shut them down, and then headed for high-ground to get to my house (which is luckily on a hill). The wife, however, is stuck in the godawful traffic and may have to wind up leaving her car in a parking garage and having me go get her. Second commute from hell in 9 months. Screw DC weather.....

Send TX your water :(

I haven't seen a real rain in months. I'd love nothing more than a couple weeks straight of solid severe weather.

Reb Cpl wrote: Good luck man. Are you near water at all? If so, prepare for the worst, move stuff out of basements and off the first floor if necessary. Be over prepared.

We're safe where we are, but the people down on Huntington Avenue are seriously screwed. They get structural flooding with a normal heavy rain, and this is just going to be even worse. I doubt they'll lose a house in the manner that your parents did, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some write-offs from really really bad damage.

Cameron Run is the biggest threat here as the area I'm in is largely hilly and most streams run through deep gorges until they get to the tidal plane near the Potomac. The only other stream in the immediate area which could have some problems is the Accotink which flows through Fort Belvoir Army Base. Cameron run has been channelized to help prevent flooding, and it has several weirs along it to prevent down-stream sedimentation, but it's not enough, it's simply too short a stream to handle all the drainage it gets from the urbanized areas which surround it.

The Tiber up in Ellicott City MD apparently had so much volume that it destroyed a retaining wall crushing 6 parked cars nearby.

My former boss and friend of mine show me video of his friend up at Watkins Glen in NY where a waterfall is simply shooting out onto the road making it impassable.