Sunday, October 9, 2016

A Mere Brush with Hurricane Matthew

Although Hampton Roads was spared any direct contact with Hurricane Matthew this weekend, its upper bands of moisture got sucked up by a stationary cold front that was moving into the area this weekend.  And as a result, we got an enormous amount of rain (and wind) from that storm system.  Virginia Beach got over 9 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. 

We had record rainfall just two weeks ago that caused a lot of flooding in this city…enough to close public schools for two days.  So the ground was already saturated from that weather event.  Our storm drains just couldn’t handle the volume last night, and we got up to some pretty significant flooding all over the area this morning!  Here’s what my neighborhood looked like, and this was after it started receding.

The water crept up my street into the early morning hours, and my good friend who lives three doors down had one of her vehicles flooded out.  We were lucky, because our house is literally the highest one in the neighborhood, and it never floods right in front of my house.  Several of the neighbors were proactive and moved their cars in front of my house, which was wise. 

I went for a walk and discovered a lot of flooded vehicles, impassable roads, and people without power.  The traffic control boxes were under water, so the traffic lights were malfunctioning, too.  People have been driving through the common area in front of our neighborhood and through the medians to get onto higher ground, so you can imagine how many muddy ruts there are in the grass…it’s pretty torn up out there. 

What a mess!  But we survived.

Goodbye, Matthew!

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