Washington DC Drowns In Epic Monday Flash Flood

The now famous phot of the person in the pink Oxford shirt
stranded atop a flooded ar in the Washington DC area
on Monday. 

I'm sure you heard on the news that Washington DC, and parts of Maryland and Virginia had quite a flash flood on Monday.

Lots of people got stranded in cars, and many of those had to be rescued the water came up so fast.

Rainfall rates were incredible. As WTOP explained:

"Reagan National Airport reported 3.3 inches of rain in an hour, including a half inch of rain in 11 minutes, on Monday morning. Between three and six inches of rain had fallen in Montgomery County by 11 a.m."

For perspective, 3.3 inches of rain is very roughly how much rain we should expect around here in Vermont during a full month.

WTOP goes on: "National Weather Service meteorologiset Cody Ledbetter said the storm dumped about 6.3 inches of rain near Frederick, Maryland, about 4.5 inches near Arlington, Virginia."

Driving into flooded roads is a big no-no. But many people got trapped because they set off for their morning commute before it started raining, then became trapped as the downpours hit and water started rising around their cars.

The National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency, which is meant to (rightly) scare people into getting serious about taking precautions, like staying put and not driving if you were in a safe place that wasn't flooding.

It seemed no place was completely safe. Water even seeped into the White House basement.

As meteorologist Marshall Shepherd noted in Forbes, something called precipitable water was at sky high levels in the DC area Monday morning. It's complicated, but precipitable water is one way of measuring how hard it can potentially rain in a given area.

Precipitable water in the atmosphere was at near record highs at the time of the storms, so all you needed was a trigger to unleash incredible downpours. A weak trough of low pressure in the area did the trick.

You always have to be nervous when they say precipitable water levels are at the highest 1 percent possible. This often leads to flash floods.

Now, climate scientists will tell us that these big flash flood events like the one yesterday are becoming more common as global warming takes hold. Warmer air can hold more water, increasing the chances of flooding downpours.

All this is true. But I think it's impossible to say whether the flood in DC, Maryland and Virginia Monday has a direct line to climate change. Floods like these have always happened, so it could be just chance that this happened. Whether climate change influenced this is right now, anybody's guess.

Of course there's videos.

Here's a compilation of images and clips from NBC:



Here's a clip from the Washington Post. I especially like the sudden waterfalls in the Metro station and in somebody's back yard:



This is, or was, Baker Park in Frederick, Maryland: