Before Pennsylvania even had time to dry out from Irene, it looks like we just got creamed again with the remnants of Lee. This time, however, Central Pennsylvania got the worst of it, rather than us. But folks along the Delaware River are still in trouble, since the rains were quite fierce upstream. This picture was taken a few hours ago, and the river will not crest until tomorrow morning. The problem is, it’s rained so much here that the ground won’t take any more water, so it’s all going to end up in the rivers and streams.
We did OK here. The heavy thunderstorms moving through around 4AM woke me up, and we had rain heavy enough for a while to keep my sump pump pretty much constantly on, but no power loss, and the rains didn’t keep up long enough to pose a serious threat. It wasn’t like Irene, which was several hours of continuous torrential downpour.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks in Central Pennsylvania. You can see footage of some of the flooding here. Checked in with my dad, who’s out near Lebanon, and they came through OK, but since he’s active with the local fire department, spent all night pumping out basements and helping rescue stranded drivers. Capitol Ideas has video of the current state of the Susquehanna River, as well as continuing Twitter coverage of the situation in Central Pennsylvania.
The sad fact is, people in Texas are wishing we would be hit by these storms. Though, when we aren’t praying for rain for ourselves, we are praying that those being hit by the storms are OK.
While my home is safe since the same sort of sensibilities that led me to get a CCW also convinced me that buying a home in any area that could flood under anything short of Biblical catastrophe conditions, it appears that the town I live in will be getting near record water levels. Flood stage is around 19 feet and we’re looking at a crest of around 32 feet…and some areas have simply blown known records by huge margins.
Some photos:
http://www.wnep.com/weather/severeweatherhome/wnep-wnepslideshowseptember-part2-20110908,0,1119786.photogallery
Yeah… I think we’re getting pretty close to biblical proportions here. A shame we can’t send some of this crap down to the folks in Texas and Oklahoma.
What a mess!
If Obama wants a shovel-ready jobs program, I’d be all for a pipeline to ship some of this water back to Oklahoma and Texas.
Pretty concerned about the family cabin. This, plus the beavers trying to dam up the creek just downstream of the cabin could make a great big mess.