Extreme Flooding in York, PA, Harrisburg

Sep 7, 2011; 2:13 PM ET

Extreme flooding is occurring today from Washington, D.C. northward through Ellicot City, MD, and York, Harrisburg and Williamsport, PA. The reason is that the same line of storms keeps moving northward and seems never-ending.

I just spent a while on the phone with my girlfriend in York, PA, trying to route her around flood waters. Photos appear below.

A lot of roads there are closed, and traffic tied up, including some major arteries as shown in the screen capture below from PennDOT (click for a live map). At 2:30 PM, they closed all exits between 18 and 21 on I-83 north of York.

A radar estimate map (through this morning only!) is shown below. From actual rain gauges, here are the highlights: The USGS Hershey, PA Gauge reported 6.44″ today, 10.49″ since the weekend. Falmouth, PA: 5.79″ and 9.06″. Watsontown, PA got 7.42″; Bethlehem & Dover, PA have also reported 7″ total on CoCoRAHs. From NWS storm reports, Rockaway, NJ has totalled 8.43″ with 8.11 at Becket, MA and 7.5 at Elma, VA.

And that’s just the short-term flooding. Rivers take longer to rise, and I’m concerned about flooding in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Friday. The Susquehanna River is projected to rise from 5 feet yesterday (and 10 feet this morning) to 24.2 feet by the end of the week. Click below to see a live version of this graph:

At this level, it will only be 0.2 feet below the levels achieved during the 2004 flood, which also affected us here in State College. What might the river look like downtown? Check out these flooding photos from 2004, and consider the NWS’s “flood impacts” listed on the page above:

– The residential section of Front and Second Streets in Harrisburg flood at this level. Cameron Street in Harrisburg floods due to backwater from Paxton Creek.
– Evacuations are necessary in the Shipoke area of Harrisburg. The water level reaches the corner of Keller and Front Streets.
US 22/322 in the vicinity of the Dauphin Narrows is impacted by flood waters.
Homes on both banks are affected by high water. This is the approximate level of Routes 11 and 15…upstream of the Market Street Bridge.
A number of homes in West Fairview…Dauphin…and Harrisburg flood.
Basements of residences and businesses on both banks flood. The parking lot on City Island begins to take on water.
The recreation area of City Island is evacuated.

(BLOOMSBURG, Pa.) — Northern stretches of the swollen Susquehanna River began receding Friday after days of rainfall from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee flooded communities from Virginia to New York, leading to evacuation orders for nearly 100,000 people.

The damage was concentrated along the Susquehanna in Binghamton, N.Y., in Wilkes-Barre, where more than 70,000 people were told to evacuate, and communities downstream in Maryland. The National Weather Service said the Susquehanna crested above 38 feet Thursday night in Wilkes-Barre — below the top of the levee system and under the levels reached after historic flooding spawned by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. “They did what was right for them, the people down there,” said Tom Vaxmonsky, a resident of West Pittson, just upstream from Wilkes-Barre. “But it’s like everything else, for every action there’s a reaction. And the reaction is that we got a lot more water than we did in ’72 with the Agnes flood.”

As flood waters that inundated the city of Birmingham, which the mayor called the worst in more than 60 years, and surrounding communities began subsiding, the first of the 20,000 evacuees began returning to their homes.

Robert Smith, 35, made it back around noon to his home in a struggling section of Binghamton. Mud and debris covered pavement, and water still blocked streets closest to the river. But he felt inspired by the time he spent in a shelter; when a woman collapsed on the floor there, he said, strangers rushed to tend to her. “Everybody was helping each other out, just total strangers,” he said. “You’ve never seen it before in your life.”

The flooding was fed by days of drenching rains from what had been Tropical Storm Lee, and followed a little more than a week the dousing that Hurricane Irene gave the East Coast. In some areas of Pennsylvania, the rainfall totals hit 9 inches or more, on top of what was already a relatively wet summer.

Authorities in Pennsylvania closed countless roads, including some heavily traveled interstates, and evacuation shelters opened to serve the many displaced people.

The Susquehanna’s crest at Wilkes-Barre had been predicted for Friday, but a broken gauge prevented experts from determining the exact height of the water, weather service hydrologist Dave Ondrejik said.

President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Pennsylvania and New York early Friday, clearing the way for federal aid.

Damage in parts of New Jersey that were inundated by Irene’s rainfall was less than feared. About 300 residents waited to return home after Lee’s remnants renewed flooding. Three houses were swept off their foundations by a mudslide, but no one was injured.

Rubinkam reported from Wilkes-Barre. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Michael Hill in Binghamton; Chris Carola in Albany,

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. –  President Barack Obama formally declared an emergency in Pennsylvania early Friday, adding to a previous declaration covering New York state, authorizing federal agencies to coordinate disaster relief efforts in order to “save lives and to protect property and public health and safety,” according to a White House statement.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee poured water on top of the already soaked Northeast on Thursday, closing hundreds of roads and forcing evacuation orders for more than 100,000 people from the Susquehanna River’s worst flooding in nearly 40 years.

Most of the evacuations were ordered in and around Wilkes-Barre, where the levee system is just high enough to hold back the river if it crests at the predicted level. Even if the levees hold, 800 to 900 unprotected homes were in danger. If they fail, thousands of buildings could be lost.

“This is a scary situation,” said Stephen Bekanich, Luzerne County’s emergency management director. He and other officials were confident the levees would work but sought volunteers to lay sandbags on both sides of the river.

In Hummelstown, another Pennsylvania community along the river, Donna MacLeod had to be rescued from her home.

“I’m heartsick,” she said. “I know I lost two cars and everything that was in my basement and everything that was on the first floor. But I have my life and I have my dog, so that’s good.”

Upriver in Binghamton, N.Y., a city of about 45,000, the Susquehanna coursed into the streets and climbed halfway up lampposts at a downtown plaza. Mayor Matt Ryan said it was the city’s worst flooding since the flood walls were built in the 1930s and `40s.

Road closures effectively sealed Binghamton off to outside traffic as emergency responders scrambled to evacuate holdouts who didn’t heed warnings to leave. Buses and then boats were used to evacuate residents, and National Guard helicopters were on standby.

“It’s going to get worse,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, warning people to leave when they get the order.

Up to nine inches of rain fell in parts of Pennsylvania, and a similar amount fell in Binghamton. Rivers and streams passed or approached flood stage from Maryland to Massachusetts, and experts said more flooding was coming.

The storm compounded the misery for some people still trying to bounce back from Hurricane Irene.

Some of the areas hardest hit by the August storm, such as Vermont, avoided the brunt of the latest bad weather. But in Paterson, N.J., where the Passaic River was rising, about 75 people were still in a shelter because of Irene.

“We just finished cleaning up after the flood from Irene,” said Edith Rodriguez, who lived in shelters for three days and spent Wednesday night at a high school outside Schenectady, N.Y., because of Lee. “Now we have to start all over again.”

Commuters and other travelers searched for detours as highways and other roads were flooded out, including sections of New York’s Interstate 88, which follows the Susquehanna’s path. In eastern Pennsylvania, where hundreds of roads were closed, flooding and a rock slide partially closed the Schuylkill Expressway, a major artery into Philadelphia.

Amtrak passenger service on New York’s east-west corridor was canceled, as were classes at many colleges and schools across the Northeast.

At least nine deaths have been blamed on Lee: four in central Pennsylvania, one in Maryland and four others killed when it came ashore on the Gulf Coast last week.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett warned of “a public health emergency because sewage treatment plants are underwater and no longer working.”

“Flood water is toxic and polluted,” he said. “If you don’t have to be in it, keep out.”

Up to 75,000 residents in and around Wilkes-Barre were ordered to leave. The mayor told residents to pack food, clothing and medicine and plan for a three-day evacuation.

The river was projected to crest overnight at 40.8 feet — essentially the same height as the levee system and nearly the level it reached in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes caused massive flooding in the area. Luzerne County officials ordered all communities flooded by Agnes to evacuate for the remnants of Lee.

Rose Simko packed up her car and headed to higher ground to stay with family. She was worried about her house, just 150 feet from a levee, but knew she had to leave.

“Everything is replaceable,” she said, “but my life is not.”

Bekanich said several thousand people left their homes, but he did not yet have a complete total. Shelters prepared to handle close to 5,000 people were beginning to fill up, Luzerne County Commissioner Maryanne Petrilla said.

Some 20,000 evacuations were ordered for the Binghamton area, and another 6,000 to 10,000 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital. Crews put sandbags around the governor’s mansion, and the first lady moved furnishings from the first floor as the river spilled over its banks.

At the mouth of the Susquehanna, hundreds of residents of Havre de Grace, Md., also were ordered to leave.

In Port Deposit, Md., about 600 people were urged to evacuate as a dam’s flood gates were opened to cope with the heavy rain. By 4 p.m. the town appeared to be nearly empty, but Roger Kerr, grilling some steaks outside his apartment building, said he planned to ride out the flood.

`’I’ve got stuff to watch. I’m on the second floor, 12 feet high. It isn’t going to get that high,” Kerr said.

It is somewhat unusual to have this many evacuation orders for an American flood, though hurricanes such as Irene can force millions from their homes.

Similar-sized evacuations were ordered in the Northeast for floods in 1996 and 2006 and during the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. About 11,000 people were evacuated from flood-threatened neighborhoods in Minot, N.D., in July.

Forecasters warned that the dispiriting summer soaking wasn’t over and flooding would last four days or more.

“I really feel sorry for people because the sun will be out next week but the water will still be rising in rivers and streams,” said Mark Wysocki of the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

On Thursday, 98 different USGS river and stream monitors registered flood levels in the Northeast. And there are 26 areas that are considered in major flooding. That’s on top of more than 100 locales that set record flood stages from Hurricane Irene.

Tom Graziano, chief of the Hydrologic Services Division at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said many streams in the Northeast were showing the highest flows ever recorded for the date.

Irene “really primed the pump” in terms of saturating the ground, Graziano said, “and now we’re adding this tremendous amount of rainfall.”

Though the storm was a remnant of Lee, Wysocki also blamed Hurricane Katia, far out in the Atlantic, for the lingering downpour.

He said Katia and a slow-moving high pressure system over Ohio “acted as blockers,” producing a narrow corridor for the storm as it came north.

Hurricane Irene continues to grow in strength and ferocity and is now on track to become a Category 4 hurricane, authorities said. Fueled by warm waters and nothing to slow it down, the hurricane is taking a path that will likely skirt Florida and head straight for the Carolinas, with landfall this weekend.

The National Hurricane Center warns that the storm remains unpredictable and is urging East Coast residents to closely track the first major hurricane of the 2011 season as it heads toward the United States so that they can be prepared for impact.

The storm, which is now a Category 2 hurricane, is moving at about 12 mph and is currently north of the Dominican Republic, said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen in an interview with The Times. Unfortunately, that means “it’s moving into an environment which is very ideal for strengthening. … We expect it to become a Category 4 hurricane as it passes east of central Florida.”

The warm ocean waters and very low wind shear are the two key factors driving the hurricane, he said. High wind shear could help disrupt the storm, scattering it.

“We expect the storm to stay off the coast of Florida, which is good news for Florida. But it’s still looking like it’s going to impact the Carolinas and could make landfall there as a major hurricane.”