Deth

Models have been pointing to this day being one for the record books. At one point they had us in the sweet spot for the heaviest rain, but then they started shifting north a bit. It’s still impressive how close they can get to reality.

We didn’t get it too bad here in my backyard. The heaviest of the stratiform rain was more to the north and west. A good part of the day it kept sliding north just west of the river. We ended up with somewhere between 5 to 6 inches of rainfall accumulation, which is nothing to downplay. There was lots of flooding. It was definitely a lot of rain, but it was spread out enough during the day to not create major issues. Creeks came up and all that, but the heaviest stuff was over towards Philly.

To our south and east in the warm sector and from what I read there was at least some sun, the supercell storms blew up. Even York Count had been under a tornado warning with that cell essentially heading straight for us. Having been on the wrong side of the warm from today, it lost its energy source as it got up this way. We just had some heavy rain and gusty winds.

By the evening things were really degrading down near Philly with supercells blowing up. That radar was really something to see. There were confirmed tornadoes in Maryland during the afternoon.

Later towards evening is when things really went downhill for Philly and Jersey. Those supercells on radar looked like something straight out of the Midwest. The warnings said that there was a large and dangerous tornado confirmed on the ground, then I saw the video a bit later of a wedge on the ground. It apparently destroyed some houses in one development and may or may not have stayed on the ground from south of Philly all the way up the Burlington Bristol Bridge.

Only to add to the issues from the remnants of Ida, Philly, Jersey, and New York had rain rates up to and over three inches an hour. They had massive flash flooding in areas that were the worst hit.

Ida will no doubt be one that goes into the textbooks and lectures for what it did. It was a strong hurricane when it hit Louisiana, and storm chasers recorded the surge live with remote cameras. That was really an interesting thing to see. The recorded 149 mph wind and gusts to 172 were no joke either. It wasn’t one of those storms that was weakening as it was making the landfall, and stayed a major hurricane for hours over land.