Helene and NC, could that happen in the DMV?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only Cat 2, we did have Isabel hit 20 years ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/09/18/remembering-hurricane-isabel-10-years-later-photos/

That was the worst we’ve had that I was living here for. I didn’t have flooding, but hearing the trees crashing down from the wind in the middle of the night was terrifying. I live toward the top of a hill with no creeks or rivers nearby so flooding is less of a concern for me, but as others have said the topography of our are is very different than mountainous NC. But it could be terrible for people living near the Potomac, Anacostia or the Bay.

Isabel was especially hard since it was the third horrible September in a row, preceded by 9/11 and the DC sniper the next year.

We actually moved on the day Isabel hit and I remember being worried the moving van was going to tip on the beltway with the winds. I ended up just having the movers leave tons of stuff in our garage so they could go home earlier.

There was a more recent storm that hit as a hurricane further south then came up and just sat on top of us for days and days and wouldn’t move, with the rain just pouring down in sheets. We had sod much heavy rain that the storm drains weee overflowing and there was no place for the water to go so it flooded a lot of basements. The ground was so waterlogged a lot of trees fell. Those slow heavy storms can be pretty bad.

Oh wait—that was Irene when we moved. I do remember Isabel though—everyone lost power for quite some time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Asheville and its surroundings are geographically different from the DC area and pretty distinct from most other places, as far as I understand.

It was the perfect storm (no pun intended) of a 1,000 year event, in an area that is essentially a shallow bowl surrounded by higher elevations with runoff, also surrounded by TWO major rivers and countless creeks, in a geographically remote (relatively) location with fewer resources/harder to travel roads/where it is harder to store and disseminate supplies.

I mean, catastrophic rare events can impact anyone, but the exact combination of what affected Asheville is not likely to affect DC. Take your pick or what could, including flooding, but not in that formula.

+1 Dumping 30 inches of rain in mountainous terrain wreaks utter havoc, western NC similar to the horrible damage and flooding that occurred in VT previously. In the DC region, all the low lying areas that currently are areas of concern would be ravaged. However that is just a small portion of the region. Certainly there would be impacts from such an extraordinary amount of rain, but not 10 feet of water, and rivers, and mudslides coming through people's houses.