Showers and storms drop big rain ... for some
Just in, finally, from a pleasant hour on the JFX, watching the rain fall and trickle down the gutter beside the "fast" lane. The mid-morning thunderstorm toppled a tree across all three southbound lanes, just north of the Druid Park Lake Drive exit. Traffic had backed up to just below Cold Spring by the time I arrived. From there to the tree took about an hour. But I had plenty of company. Were you there, too?
The heavy rain caused loads of problems, elsewhere, too. Click here for more.
I was out of town for the weekend, but it's clear from this morning's CoCoRaHS Network report that some locations across the region had some huge rainfall numbers. BWI-Marshall Airport was not among them. Although the airport got a nice rinse, the weekend total was just just 1.5 inches. Parts of the Eastern Shore, where the drought has been the most severe this summer, saw a month or more of rain:
24 HOURS ENDING MONDAY MORNING:
Bishopville, Worcester County: 4.99 inches
Ocean City: 4.40 inches
White Oak, Montgomery: 3.52 inches
Kingsville, Harford: 3.22 inches
Baltimore City: 3.21 inches
Catonsville, Baltimore County: 2.83 inches
Towson, Baltimore County: 2.29 inches
Bel Air, Harford: 1.92 inches
Columbia, Howard: 1.10 inches
Westminster, Carroll: 0.73 inch
24 HOURS ENDING SUNDAY MORNING:
White Marsh, Baltimore County: 3.92 inches
North East, Cecil: 3.85 inches
Waldorf, Charles: 2.30 inches
Annapolis, Anne Arundel: 2.23 inches
Baltimore City: 1.52 inches
Cockeysville, Baltimore County: 1.15 inches
Columbia, Howard: 0.78 inch
Salisbury, Wicomico: 0.62 inch
(PHOTO: Top: James Willinghan, Howard County, Aug. 14, 2011. Used with permission. Bottom: Frank Roylance, Baltimore Sun)
Comments
Frank:
I have lived in Towson for more than 30 years of my life and I don't know who was calculating the rain in Towson on Sunday, but we had "considerably" more than 2.29 inches they reported. I'd bet a lot of money we had well over three inches- if not four inches.
FR REPLIES: Rain totals in storms like these can vary widely over fairly small distances. I had 1.41 inches on my gauge on the WeatherDeck in Cockeysville. But, unless you have a rain gauge, it's hard to know with any certainty. Readers? Anyone in Towson have a reliable rain gauge that saw more rain than the CoCoRaHS observer's reading?
Posted by: Jester | August 15, 2011 1:31 PM
I don't live in Towson (l live in the city, near Penn Station), and I don't even have a rain gauge, but I can (hopefully) respond to some of the writer's concerns.
My brother drove a semi-truck in the Mid-West (from Milwaukee to southern Illinois, to Northern Lower Michigan, to Cleveland, to various parts of central Kentucky), and he told us of several times of being in heavy rain on one side of a bridge, and no rain at all on the other side - in fact dry pavement was not at all uncommon.
Posted by: Mike | August 16, 2011 12:23 AM