Washington is used to thunderstorms like the one that this morning pushed  trees to their limits and drenched commuters. It's just that they more commonly hit in the afternoon. WHICH IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW. Wow, we called it!

Continue reading

But this morning AND THIS EVENING, flash flood warnings or severe thunderstorm warnings gave way to a violent outburst from the skies. ABC7 crews moved with utter dispatch to cover the storm's impact. Here's a scroll of the events and some quotes:

UPDATE 7:28: We're done for tonight. Look back tomorrow. If there's still news to be had, TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG will be here for you.

UPDATE 7:25: Uh-oh! TBD's Arlingtonish reporter, Rebecca A. Cooper, is reporting on Twitter that there's a water main break at Harrison Street and Little Falls Road. In Arlington, of course. The DES, (WHATEVER THAT IS, not TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG'S area of expertise), is investigating.

UPDATE 7:21: As we come closer to closing out this particular rumbler, a reminder that many of MoCo's citizens will not have power back for days.

UPDATE 7:02: Ooooo! Weather-related flight delays from Dr. Gridlock. Thanks, Doc!

UPDATE 6:58: So now that TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG had some chats with some co-workers and is back on the spinny stool behind the ABC7 assignment desk, the torrential rains should be here. And then moving along.

UPDATE 6:19 PM: Check out this Twitter stream @mjenkin's, TBD's social media individual, put together of storm stuff. It's fascinating, and it's where we found out that @capitolweather is saying there's a FLASH FLOOD WARNING until 8:15 a.m. A.M.! Bet Robert Thomas Ryan could have told us that, but he's pretty busy right about now.

UPDATE 6:09: ABC7's rooftop camera is back! Managing editor Dan Patrick is pretty happy. It's been gone for days.

UPDATE 6:08: WRC-TV (NBC4?) is talking about some kind of "vortex" that is causing all of this.

UPDATE 6:03: NWS reporting heavy rain will snag Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, the District, MoCo, and Howard County. And everything else generally around the Beltway. That's a lot of SEO tags and geocoding.

UPDATE 6:00: Thank goodness for the flash flood WARNING. Almost forgot that this is the TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG.

UPDATE 5:55: Flash flood warning for THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA...
CENTRAL HOWARD COUNTY IN CENTRAL MARYLAND...
EASTERN MONTGOMERY COUNTY IN CENTRAL MARYLAND...
WEST CENTRAL PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY IN CENTRAL MARYLAND...
CITY OF ALEXANDRIA IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA...
CITY OF FALLS CHURCH IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA...
ARLINGTON COUNTY IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA...
EASTERN FAIRFAX COUNTY IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA...

until 8:45 p.m. (Again, poor formatting the result of TBD's unwillingness to do anything but cut and paste.)

UPDATE 5:53: Just got a list from ABC7 of the things that are messed up in MoCo. It's long. Don't try to go to the library. And 200 traffic signals are down. TREAT THEM AS FOUR WAY STOPS. We should all be practiced at this by now.

UPDATE 5:39: MORE SANDBAG INFO. Gonna try out our rich text editor for pull quotes on this one. Check this out from D.C. MPD's Second District:

DPW is making sandbags available to residents between 3 pm and midnight on Thursday, August 12, 2010, to help prevent their homes from flooding in light of additional storms predicted for later today. The sandbags can be picked up from the rolloff box at the DPW site at New Jersey Avenue and K Street, SE (on the New Jersey Avenue side on the back lower level). The bags weigh approximately 40 lbs. to 50 lbs., but DPW will not be able to provide assistance with loading them into residents’ vehicles. DPW does ask that people take no more than four bags per household.

UPDATE 5:33: Apparently, according to ABC7's eminent managing editor Dan Patrick, the sandbags are for D.C.'s Bloomingdale neighborhood, where flooding is frequent and bad. That's another geocode. And also another SEO tag. Plus, this thing needs more regular tags. Kaboom!

UPDATE 5:29: An official and poorly formatted update on power outages from ABC7. (The poor formatting is all TBD's.)

PEPCO
District of Columbia 12008
Montgomery 57058
Prince George's 5186

BGE
Anne Arundel 450
Calvert 2
Montgomery 3
Prince George's 52

Dominion
Northern Virginia 6,359

UPDATE 5:27: WHOA @ABC7Kris says DPW is making sandbags available to residents between 3 p.m. and midnight. More to come on this for sure.

UPDATE 5:21: Things are getting worse for MoCo. Official tornado warning.

UPDATE 4:50: Add Carroll County to that tornado warning list. And Montgomery County to the geocode list. Check, check.

UPDATE 4:41: The chancellor was supposed to be listening right now, but she isn't because the power is out. Or so says a press release from DCPS. Michelle Rhee was scheduled to hold office hours in the Brookland neighborhood tonight.

UPDATE 4:32: And another one from ABC7: The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Northeastern Frederick County until 5 p.m. Several more minutes left on the last one, though.

UPDATE 4:22: The power is still out in Wheaton, Md. Which means our Montgomery Countyish area reporter is on her way there. And we're adding a more specific geocode to this post. Because that's what we do.

UPDATE 4:17: One of our friends at ABC7 is reporting this: "Emergency alert system just interrupted WTOP. NWS Tornado Warning for Fredericksburg/Stafford area until 4:45 p.m."

UPDATE 4:10: It turns out that God IS on our side. Check out this tweet from @HowardMortman: Weather oddity meets marketing brilliance: thunderstorm clouds overhead form pattern that says @TBD.

UPDATE 4:04: It's raining in Rossslyn. Whoops. Typo. Strikethrough isn't available in our rich text editor. So now it's bolded. Just enough.

UPDATE 3:50: Look, Dr. Gridlock bested us on the crowdsourcing of closed streets. Help him out.

UPDATE 1:30ish: Adrian Fenty, interviewed at the Washington Hilton after the Dupont Merchant’s Association and Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce mayoral forum around 11 a.m.

On the storm:
"I think, from my early indications, it wasn't as bad as the last storm."

Did he run this morning?:
"I did not run this morning."

Because of the storm?:
"No. I wasn't scheduled to run this morning."

We were wondering (about the running):
"Thanks. I saw someone run though, out there running."

You did?:
"Through the storm."

Are you going tonight?:
"To run? No, I'll be working."

Would you have run in this storm?:
"I wouldn't have gone out in this storm, no."

But if you were already out on a run?:
"If you were already out, what could you do? Yeah. This may have been as bad a storm [as it gets]. You may just want to stay under a bridge until it goes over, it was pretty bad, pretty dangerous, to be out there."

UPDATE 9:51: We got some reporting from the District Department of Transportation. Incidents are the issue at hand.

- Tree on track at Silver Spring affecting MARC and Red Line service. Single-tracking through area.

- Traffic Alert: 16th St NB at Farragut - tree down lanes closed. All traffic being rerouted to 14th or 17th sts, NW.

- Intersection Update: 24 intrsctns out, 22 in flash. TCOs, generators and portable stop signs being deployed.

UPDATE 9:47: This TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG has been reordered so that the most recent updates appear first. See how you all like that. 

UPDATE 9:25: ABC7 Senior Meteorologist Robert Thomas Ryan is telling the TBDSEVEREWEATHERLIVEBLOG that the storm this morning may well have been a good eight miles thick. Eight miles. Really, Ryan? When pressured on that estimate, Ryan responds with greater detail: "Up to 40,000 feet." Hey, the guy's been on this beat for a good while, so we're going with him on this one. And do you think that's just worthless trivia? Think that's just ABC7 and TBD showing off their command of storm miscellany? No way, we don't waste your time here. The reason that the eight-mile stat is so relevant is that it explains why it was so dark this morning. When I was on my way in, I was thinking it was time to go home. Other insights from our weather source: National Weather Service these days may have something of a trigger finger when it comes to calling for severe T-storms. "They're tending to issue more thunderstorm warnings for what in years past may have been just strong storms." Yeah, but how are you going to scare people back into their homes and offices by saying, "Dear Public: The National Weather Service is issuing an advisory for strong storms."? If I heard such an advisory, I'd just plow ahead with my tennis and golf outings. But don't change the channel yet! Ryan has more on this storm, particularly on why on earth we ended up with a killer storm in the morning. I mean, can't we just sked all our storms to hit in the afternoon, as we've been doing for centuries here in this moss swamp? Well, here's why we got it in the early hours, according to Ryan: "With the atmosphere being more humid when showers do form, the process where the humidity condenses into water drops and ice crystals releases heat," and that keeps the rough weather going overnight.

UDPATE 9:14: ABC7 crew captures some great on-the-scene reporting from the garden style apartment building up in Gaithersburg at which a monster 80-foot-tall tree rammed its way through the second and third stories. ABC7's interviewee apparently resides on a lower floor and talks of making an attempt to assist the people upstairs by taking them a case of bottled water. "'Cause you just heard them screaming, screaming, and screaming." In the end, she didn't take the water upstairs because "I just had to run out of the building." 

UDPATE 9:11: We have a report from TBD in the field about the Courthouse Metro. It's a good one, too.

UPDATE 9:03: Here is the take on the storm from Ward 1 D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham, who, given his approach to the storm, won't be much help to the ABC7 crew in nailing down details on the fallout from this monster a.m. weather event: "Wasn't it awesome?" says the councilmember, never one to understate a damn thing. "It was really something. An unbelievable storm. I haven't had any calls yet. I stayed inside and it looked like the world was coming to an end. No calls yet but I'm sure they'll be coming in. "

UPDATE 8:43: Tree falls over Metrorail Red Line tracks: Eyewitness account from TBD employee! Robert Forsyth, a Colesville resident, commuted in from the Glenmont Red Line station. This is what he says about the experience: "You couldn't see ten feet in front of the train, and neither could she," says TBD employee Forsyth, an outspoken man when it comes to weather. The train was moving tentatively. The train comes out of the tunne at Forest Glen, and at that point, says Forsyth, "you couldn't see a thing." Train was moving less than five miles an hour, says Forsyth, who credits the Metrorail driver with "being safe." Said driver was very communicative on the train, updating passengers on what was going on. A supervisor showed up on the train at Silver Spring. This individual went outside to assess the situation: A tree had fallen over the CSX/MARC tracks, over the fence, and extended onto the Metrorail track, about two-thirds the way across. Forsyth has a picture of the arboreal obstruction that cannot possibly be posted to this website because of its blurry quality, but good on Forsyth for clicking away with the mobile camera. Overall, says Forsyth, "the operator did a great job; she kept us informed, she was cautious, she played it safe; she was very apologetic," says the statuesque Forsyth, sounding vaguely like Steven Taubenkibel.

UPDATE 8:40: AP is reporting that 100,000 people are without power in the D.C. area. No notion at this point if they'll spend another six days that way.

UPDATE 8:38: A ranking Montgomery County fire official is reporting that ten people in the Gaithersburg garden apartment building suffered minor injuries. No one was trapped in the structure.

UPDATE 8:29: Power outages in Prince George's County are affecting nearly 14,400 customers.

UPDATE 8:27: National Weather Service is advising that the severe weather will remain in effect till 8:45.

UPDATE 8:22: Power outages! Montgomery County: 71,000 customers;  16,000 in D.C.

UPDATE 8:20: Montgomery College is reporting that power is out on the campus.  

UPDATE 8:05: Scott Graham, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service, is reporting that a tree has fallen on a three-story garden apartment building in Gaithersburg. The tree is approximately three to four feet in diameter and 80 feet tall. It ripped through the second and third floor. Several people are believed to be trapped inside, says Graham. A search-and-rescue task force is on the scene. As of 8:00 a.m., the crew has not yet entered the building. We are monitoring the situation aggressively, so keep coming back for updates.

In the beginning there was:

DDOTDC: RT @drgridlock: Tree on track at Silver Spring affecting MARC and Red Line service. Single-tracking through area.

DDOTDC: Traffic Alert: 16th St NB at Farragut - tree down lanes closed. All traffic being rerouted to 14th or 17th sts, NW.

DDOTDC: intersection Update: 24 intrsctns out, 22 in flash. TCOs, generators and portable stop signs being deployed. Take it easy, be safe.