Flood warning

We live in central PA. It's not pretty right now. We're in the middle of 4-5 inches of rain from a low pressure system that's just been spinning around the area. And now Lee is coming up through. The Susquehanna is expected to crest about 7 feet above flood level on Saturday, I think it is.

Came into work this morning and had to drive around til I found an open street and could get to the building. Everything is closed.....the creek is overflowing everywhere. And it's just a downpour.

And our highs are only in the low 60s. I gave in yesterday. When I got home from work, I broke down and put the electric blanket on the bed. And turned both sides on High. DH and I were both freezing and with the damp chill in the air, we couldn't get warm. As soon as the blanket started to warm up, I dove right in and it was the warmest I had been in a few days.

I had to fight with all seven cats for bed space, the little brats. The older cats all know what the blanket means.....warmth. BooBoo was in the bedroom when I got the blanket out of the closet and he started meowing right away, I guess to tell me to hurry up! I got the blanket on, turned it on, pulled the comforter up over him and he curled up and went right to sleep. Didn't take long for the other cats to figure it out either....old bones love warmth. Tabby didn't know that the blanket meant warmth, but as soon as she hopped up on the bed, she curled right up and went to sleep, purring the whole time. Last night, DH and I slept with all seven very warm and contented cats stretched out on the bed.

I'll probably take the blanket back off in a few days when things start to warm up again. But for now? Life is warm. And wet! Very wet!

This has to be one of the wettest summers on record for central PA. We're starting to get quite worried now. It simply will not stop raining. We won't get flooded; I mentioned before that we're on a hill. But getting off the hill and to work could prove to be interesting in the next couple of days.

Take care!
We are totally opposite over on this side. Today is supposed to be in the upper 90's. We usually have lots of rain but none for quite awhile now. We could use some as there are forest fires near Mt. Hood and other parts of the state. It's nothing like Texas but bad for us. The smoke is being blown into the Willamette Valley, strong smell of smoke and we are quite a ways from any of the fires.

Ugh! We are just missing this rain you are getting. We've gotten showers off and on. They are in the forecast till next Tuesday! We must have gotten some wind this afternoon though. When DD and I came home after being out for a few hours my basil was blown over as well as one of my chairs and watering can (it was empty). Poor basil got knocked over yesterday too. Why can't we ship this rain to Texas!? My cousin lives maybe a half hour outsdie of NYC and she has had trouble with the roads being able to get to her client visits and what not. I had to go out and buy sneakers for my DD yesterday it was so cold! And the toddler shoe isle was quite busy so it wasn't just me unprepared for those temps!! Today is better though.

According to the local weatherweenies tonight, we have had over 9 inches of rain in the past two days. Thunderstorms, downpours, you name it. It will not stop.

They left us out of work early this afternoon because we weren't sure if we could even get home....Lewisburg is completely flooding out; streets and streams. The Susquehanna River is expected to crest at Lewisburg at least 7 feet over flood stage. It's not pretty. I made it home, but we don't know if we're going to get back into town tomorrow morning to go to work. The streets around my work building are all flooded now....I had to drive through it to get to the main road to get home. Even the driveway at work is turning into a pond.

Our son has 4 inches of water in his basement....it is ugly there, too. He lives in southern PA.

If you could keep my area in your thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. It's the worst flooding we've had in awhile. I was thinking of Texas, too. Drought, drought, and more drought. And here we are....over 9 inches of rain in two days. The weather is crazy.

ETA: We just got word that our vet's hospital is evacuating because of the flooding. I don't know what they're going to do with all those poor animals.

From what I can tell my family in Upstate NY is having trouble in the area too. A few weeks ago one of my fav bakeries (a cheesecake place!) burnt to the ground. Now there is flooding by the absolute best ever in all times ever restaurant. I hope it doesn't reach the place. Its very popular; but they already had to rebuild after a fire there almost 10 years ago.

It's times like this I hate being so far away; but feel grateful to my family who is there (and some great neighbors) who I know will make sure my Grandpa is ok.

I had to pop in to see how you were making out over there Pam.

Im on the opposite side of the river from Pam and her county and mine are in a state of emergency. As of a few minutes ago my part of the river which floods at 28 feet is expected to rise to 34.1 ft and they are expecting worse.

Right now our pond has met the creek behind out house. That is with two giant yards and a road seperating the two. Its really bad. Dfs brother has been evacuated from his house because their tiny little dinky creek flooded and they have a full basement and are looking to possible having water in their house depending on how bad things get, their garage is flooded out. Our driveway is pretty demolished we have a pipe that runs water to a ditch and out, but its been so overloaded that the pipe is completely bare all the stone is down in the grass. DFs garage got water in it and he was outside last night digging ditches for water to flow in one direction away from the garage.

OMG This sucks. As of right now all three ways for us to get into town for anything are all closed off so we are pretty much stuck at home....Downside to that....we are going to run out of smokes and possibly milk. The upside, we havent lost power and we still have tv.

Im beyond over this rain. Back in 96 when we got flooded it was fun because I was a kid, now Im a grown up and my house and my property and my stuff is my responsibility....THIS IS NOT FUN!!!!

I'm glad you're pretty much OK, Tyler. I was wondering how you were doing since we heard the animal hospital was evacuating. It's ugly around your way, too.

The government center is closed for the day, except for emergency personnel, so I was able to stay home. I'm a planner and the planning department is closed.

But our son called to ask me to bring one of our dehumidifiers down to them. I'm going to try it, but I don't know how far I can get. I have to go down on Route 15, which follows the Susquehanna. And we've been hearing all kinds of stuff about the roads around Harrisburg, so I don't know how bad it's going to be. It's a 2-hour drive on a good day; I hate to think what it's going to be like today. And I'm not really that familiar with the areas down around there, so to take detours and such, well, that won't be pretty, even with a GPS. And since DH is sick, I'm going down there by myself. Good luck vibes would be appreciated!

NJ and NY got hit pretty badly also, thank goodness none of this affected my area:


Princeton NJ, Path Train Station Stop.


Windham, NY

Unlike your area Pam, it is very humid here and the a/c is on. It was cooler yesterday but that didn't last long.

Holy wow...you guys are in my thoughts and I'm sending vibes

Yikes. My mom's in eastern PA near NJ and her basement is flooded. Whenever it rains she gets some water in it to mop up, but with all the rain the past few weeks, it's inches of water down there. Not fun to clean up. She's got quite a hilly drive to work, with small creeks around too, so I hope her commute is ok!!

Sending dry vibes to the east coast!

You're always welcome to come to Florida. Our guest room is ready (our former "guest" thank goodness is done).

Wow! Those pictures are crazy!! We finally joined the party a bit last night around 1 am. We had one long thunderstorm for about 4 hours and then it's been thundering off and on since then. But twice now the sun has peeked out for a few minutes...only to return to rain. But I'm not complaining. We've had it good compared to you guys.

I've been chatting with my cousin who lives near NYC. She had to cancel visits for the afternoon because of the state of emergency; said she can't reach some of the places anyway because of the flooded roads. I hope her Hubby isn't having to drive too far today. He fixes machines used in hospitals for cardiac imaging. He can be called to as far as Connecticut from where they live and I think he HAS to go if a machine is down. Someone's life could depend on it ya know?

Hope you got home from your son's ok! I just saw that someone tweeted on the weathe channel social thing that the PA turnpike is closed between Harrisburg and Reading.

Pam, hope you made it there and back home safe.

Tyler, I hope your house will be OK!

Just out to everyone being affected by this. I don't know what the total rainfall's been here (near PA border in Northern NJ), but one of the towns near us, Blairstown, was basically totally cut off today. I don't know what happened up at the local vet, I think they're cut off.

Heading out today was a lot of fun, figuring out how to get out of here. There are SO many creeks, brooks, local ponds around here, and they are ALL flooded. Part of one of the main roads we use is washed away. Route 46 follows the Delaware River out this way, and good chunks of it were closed today - and parts that weren't closed yet look like they're going to close soon. It's scary to see houses and barns with water half way up them. I can't imagine what it's like for those people.

I saw several skunks running across the road, and wondered what the heck they were doing out this time of day. But one glance at the crazy rushing water which was basically all rapids and completely overflowing its banks answered that question. Gary saw a bunch of rabbits stranded on a fallen tree.

I think this is the 3rd or 4th month of record rainfall here? It FINALLY stopped raining this afternoon, and the sun came out. But we're projected to get more tonight and tomorrow.

I keep thinking... what would this look like if it were snow?

Originally Posted by LDG

I keep thinking... what would this look like if it were snow?

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I just looked it up and the average is 10" of snow per one inch of rain. It depends on the type of snow. 15" for dry powdery snow and 5" for very wet snow. Yuck!!

I will have pictures to post of my area then. I need to get them off DFs phone since he was taking the pics.

Yesterday literally in the span of about 15-20 minutes we managed to get into town, heard the cops telling everyone to get off the roads from Front street which is along the river wall all the way back to sixth street. 147 is the highway that goes along the river had water across the road but one lane was open and in the time we got into town and got back it was completely across the road and closed down we had to drive thru about 6-10 inches of water because it was the only way we could get back home. We are 'combining' households with the neighbors because we had no way to get to stores so between the two houses we had what they didnt have and they had what we didnt have.

Pam, Sunbury Animal Hospital did not take water but the under pass and the pet store all have water in it. The water was all the way up to the first entrance of the Kwik Fill. I do have a picture of that somewhere. DF has off work right now because the river went over the 147 at Steilys Campground. All the campers and RVs were under water, one had about a foot to go to be completely underwater on the way to take him to work and on my way home from dropping him off it was just barely peaking out of water. From 7 am till 10 am yesterday the river rose about two feet. It was freaking nasty.

I stayed up till midnight last night watching the news and its difficult getting stuff on Sunbury because they are focusing on places like Wilkes Barre but from what I gathered our main branch is supposed to crest today but its literally a guess as to how high its supposed to get.

We have no clue how long its going to take for things to get semi back to normal. I was hoping maybe tomorrow it will go down enough to open some roads to town but we are thinking sometime Sunday-Tuesday for things to get in a way back to normal barring major road damage. Its crazy that this flood has ripped up and demolished giant sections of roads.

Im gonna try and get some more info.

Im thanking God right now that we live high up enough that we wont get flooded. Our driveway got some heavy damage from so much heavy water pushing the rocks out and we had to refill our bottom driveway which was completely gutted open and about two feet deep all the way across from the mail boxes to the exit of the drainage pipe.

Ughhh Im gonna try and get some more info about my area since my mom is over in Snyder County thankfully not near the river but shes in a low lying area so I wanna make sure shes good.

I know, this is just awful.

Pam? Did you get home OK???????

Originally Posted by LDG

I know, this is just awful.

Pam? Did you get home OK???????

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I'm getting a bit worried with no updates.... Hope Pam and family are alright..

I'm here! Just got back about 30 minutes ago. Thanks so much for keeping us in your thoughts.

It wasn't too bad traveling. There were some areas that I had to detour around. I called Rick when I needed help and he told me what back roads to take. My sister refused to allow me to go by myself; she invited herself right along. Rick was simply too sick; he has another massive sinus infection and no way could he go. It took us about 3 hours, for a 2-hour trip.

Their basement is a mess. They called their insurance adjustor, but he hasn't come out yet. They lost their new (two months old) washer and dryer. My son lost about half of his comic book collection and his sport cards collection. We had taken some of his old comics and cards down to him in tote boxes; that stuff was OK. But he never bothered to put any of his other things in bags or boxes. It's gone. There's no way he can salvage that. Many of our grandchildren's toys and such were down there, too. Some of them can be saved; we learned back when we were in Agnes in '72 that Lysol and Clorox are wonders.

They have a gorgeous family room in their basement....which got a little over a foot of water. Carpets, furniture. He was at work and when our DDIL called him, it was already too late. They had just finished working in their basment about 8 months ago.

They never thought they'd get water. They're not in a floodplain, no creeks or streams. It was simply surface water that came in through the sump hole when the ground became too saturated to hold any more.

We stayed there....slept on couches in the living room and in the family room. There was no way we could just walk out on them. The carpet is up and ready to go to the dump. The furniture is out, too. He's going to rent a truck to haul everything. We can't fit it all in our truck.

But you know what? They're OK. It was only in the basement. The kids are OK and Maggie, our granddog, is OK, too. Their freezer is in the garage (they were going to put it in the basement, and thank goodness, they never got around to it!). So they're OK. And we made it home OK. If that's the only thing that happens to us, we're very lucky indeed. So life is good.

Lewisburg had mandatory evacuations. We were supposed to go back to work today, but I took a vacation day because I wasn't home anyway. I think Lewisburg only lost 3 houses....they were college rentals for students at Bucknell. The Susquehanna crested at 27 feet (8 feet above flood stage) in Lewisburg. Sunbury's flood wall held, even though there were some mandatory evacuations there, too; that's in Tyler's neck of the woods.

One thing that made me feel good....many of the local shelters were also accepting people's pets. That gave a lot of the older people more of a push to leave as they didn't want to leave their pets behind. They didn't have to.

HersheyPark's ZooAmerica (about 75 minutes south of here) is completely underwater. They got the animals out, but two bison were completely freaked out about being taken out and they euthanized them.

Wilkes Barre, to the east of us, is a mess. The flood levees held....and the river crested 2/10ths of a foot below the levees. That gave me goosebumps when I heard that.

We're fine. We only got a wee bit of water in the basement and everything stayed dry.

And for the first time in a long time......the sun is shining!

Originally Posted by MoochNNoodles

Hope you got home from your son's ok! I just saw that someone tweeted on the weathe channel social thing that the PA turnpike is closed between Harrisburg and Reading.

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The turnpike was closed. Thankfully, we don't have to take it to get to our son's house. We take the last turn right before you have to get on the turnpike. Interstate 80 was closed yesterday in Columbia County; Fishing Creek spilled out over its banks and shut it down.

One of my co-workers lives in Bloomsburg. He texted me yesterday morning that Bloom was completely underwater. He was only about a year old in 1972 when Agnes hit, so he doesn't know of that. He was amazed at all the water.

Oh, and the Lewisburg bridge that goes across the Susquehanna was closed down because of flooding on the other side, in Northumberland County. The bridge turned into quite the visitors attraction yesterday because you could still walk on it. People who don't remember Agnes were simply stunned at all the water everywhere!

I didn't go anywhere to take pictures as I was trying to get to my son's. But our local newspaper does have some pictures of our area. If anybody is interested, the link is: http://dailyitem.com/0100_news/x1078...om-our-readers.