Yikes. I saw the flooding in NJ and NY.

All of you guys OK?

Doing OK here in NYC, but parts of town were really slammed by rain. Here on Staten Island, some neighborhoods were really inundated, cars floating, homes flooded, etc. Not our area (forever thankful to be living on a hill).

We did watch the streets turn into rivers.

It struck us a glancing blow. One local town had water 4 feet deep in the main street (they'd been similarly afflicted when Ivan came through years ago) and a number of creeks overflowed their banks and sent water into lower lying structures and basements, but it was nothing compared to what I've seen reported further east. The rain was localized enough that the larger streams and rivers have not risen too badly.

I was not impacted. I live atop one of the highest ridges in my county. If the water reaches me, I'll be looking for an ark to come floating by.

Big Al

I was just reading about the problem of basement apartments in NYC.

We haven't had power since 5am and they are saying it could take up to a week to restore since a few substations got destroyed in the floods. Our local creek started yesterday at 2 feet and peaked at 21....a record high. A good bit of my street is completely washed away about a half mile from my house.... It will probably take weeks to fix. It's a mess. Cell service is spotty.... I'll try to post pics when it gets better.

Meanwhile in downtown Philadelphia....this was the vine street expressway for afternoon rush hour.

https://m.facebook.com/story.p...3&id=497919323604859

Lisa, sounds like you narrowly escaped the deluge! Very scary. NYC was inundated but looks like you had it worse.

I've been on that expressway on the north side of Philly so I know how deep that water was. Very, very scary. I hope that your restoration goes quickly, Lisa.

Big Al

Lisa, sorry to hear this! You may not make it back to WTF for awhile, but I hope things recover quickly for you!!

Lisa, how are things looking today?

I keep reading this thread title as "East coast hit by train..."

Lisa, I hope you are recovering.

We are good. Our power was out for about 24 hours, then on and off for another day or so, but it seems to be good now. Honestly, I have nothing to complain about - not only are there still folks without power but several people around here completely lost their homes and all their possessions and a few people died - one killed by one of the 7 (seven!) tornadoes and the rest swept away by floodwaters while trying to drive home from work. All in all, we were extremely lucky....some of our close neighbors had water in their basements (in once case about 8 feet - she said the water stopped about 2 inches from her first floor!) but no one on our street lost anything significant.

That said, here's the photo I promised - this is my street less than a half mile from my house. There are several streets like this around here (most aren't quite this bad, but still bad enough to be impassible) so getting around has been super frustrating especially for people who aren't from the area - I've spent the past week helping delivery drivers turn around and giving alternate directions to the one bridge I know is open. There's been no activity to fix anything so far - I'm sure Penndot is overwhelmed and I bet it stays like this all winter.



Looking the other direction (as you can see, it was a bit of a tourist attraction the first few days):


The bridge itself held up fine (it was redone maybe 8 years ago) -- you can see it behind the woman in the pink shirt in the 2nd photo and I'm standing on it in the first. But the water rushing around the bridge basically demolished the road...the guardrails are flattened and huge sheets of asphalt are just ripped up and laying in the woods next to the road.

While taking these pics, I also watched a tow truck pull a VW Golf out of the creek about 100 feet from the bridge. Thankfully the guy had escaped from the car before it was swept away - one of my neighbors called 911 for him. I can't imagine what would possess a person to look at that water rushing hard enough to tear up that road and decide to drive into it anyway.

Yikes, Lisa! Such a fine line between civilization…and not.

Lisa, wow! I'm so glad you didn't get the worst of it! So, so glad!!

The photos you shared, ones I've seen elsewhere.... the destruction is so bad.

Yikes! Glad you’re all OK!