AAR from downstate New York:

Rain started around 7pm, went from .25"/hr to .75"/hr to 1.8"/hr. Not much wind, around 20 mph. Have not seen so much rain since Irene in 2011. In fact, there was more rain this time than during Irene.

My house is on a hill. Monitored basement for water infiltration. Observed small puddle by rear basement door, made a dam from Portland cement across the threshold to prevent infiltration. Some water was getting under garage door by the house trap. Opened the house trap plug so water was going straight into the sewer.

Power went out around 2am. Got up at 5am, went out to assess the situation. It stopped raining. Local river, which is usually 6" deep, was about 12' deep. I could touch the water from the bridge I was standing on. Area downhill from me was completely flooded, looked like 5' to 7' of water in the affected houses and buildings.

Came back home, started to get power ready. Before Sandy I made up a short suicide cord, one end is 110, the other fits a 220v plug at the AC unit. The hot leg goes to both prongs on a 220 plug. This allows me to power up both sides of the panel through a 220v outlet. I never got to use this cord since I made it, today was the first time.

First, I attempted to use my makeshift battery backup system - four 100 ah 12v batteries and an 800W inverter. Shut off the main. Unplugged refrigerators and all AC units. Plugged in the suicide cord, then ran an extension cord outside and into the garage. Hooked up the inverter to the batteries. Plugged in the cord, turned on the inverter. Voila - I got power in the house. Checked it by turning on lights. Things were working as planned. For about 10 minutes. Then the inverter died. Don't know what happened. Batteries are still at 13.1v.

I went to plan B. Got the 2000w Champion generator and started it. Plugged the cord in. Great. That little generator gives me one 13 amp circuit for the whole house. I plugged in the main refrigerator, it ran fine. Told my wife to keep power usage to a minimum, got into the car and drove to work (company expects us to come to the jobsite no matter what).

Usual roads I take were flooded, with cars floating in the water. Turned around, went in opposite direction, went around the flooded area and got on the highway.
It took me 2.5 hrs to go 15 miles. Roads looked like a scene from zombie apocalypse. Every dip in the road had 5-10 cars abandoned. Cars were facing all directions, some were on the opposite lane, some were sideways. Some were stuck on the median. Most had body damage from collisions. Hundreds of cars were destroyed and left on the roads.

The jobsite was totally flooded (it's a foundation for a warehouse, 5.5 acres). So I left some guys to pump the site, stayed for a few hours, and went home.

A bunch of my friends and neighbors lost their cars, houses flooded. The synagogue I belong to had 7' of water inside. It's totalled. Both Torah scrolls are damaged. Right before the Holidays, our small congregation is homeless.

This sucks. This storm sucked. But we will rebuild.

Thanks for that. Wife mentioned some folks up in PA got hit pretty bad, too.

One thing that a lot of people don't do, including me, is look at whether roads leading out of my neighborhood can flood blocking my ability to get out. I actually saw that in a worst case way in Puerto Rico after Maria. A neighborhood with maybe 100 houses up in the mountains had one way in/out via a bridge over the river. Flood came, bridge gone, no way to get a vehicle in/out of the neighborhood. They actually airlifted supplies to the folks there until they could make a makeshift passage for vehicles. Crazy expensive and scary at the same time.

sorry about your congregation. I was hit with Sandy, some other storms, etc. The possibility that shit goes south is high everywhere. I'm pretty much looking at things as "ok, can they solve these problems in a week? a month?" I'm guessing, since this is America, those cars will all be towed and the roads dry within a week. Fixed to drivable in a month. So if I don't have to leave my house for a month I'm needing to be supplied for that.


People are also dumb, and get worse when things are different than usual. That's why all the cars are stuck. A smart person (you in this story) upon seeing ONE car all flooded, does not drive through the same spot. Duh

It's funny, there was a Mercedes Benz jeep down the block from me in a puddle, together with about 6 other cars. It looked like it almost made it through, his wheels were two feet away from the edge of the puddle. He did not make it. I guess he thought he could make it across with HIS car, all the others were just idiots. He was proven wrong by Mother Nature.

I have to say that I'm very proud of my 110 to 220 cord. This made running power to the house So much easier. Last time I had extension cords everywhere. Now every outlet and light is live, no mess. Main is shut off, so no backfeeding. I made sure I plugged in the extension cord into the suicide cord first, then went into the generator.

It was all quite smooth, other than my inverted dying. I wanted to see how the backup power off batteries would work, but it was no meant to be. Will buy a bigger inverter for the next time.

The power is back on, BTW.

after the "no name storm" hit us in 1993, a week or so after getting interiors wet, the air bags on several flooded cars went off locally, which at the time was thought to be salt water moving through the wires by capillary action.. don't know if the manufacturers figured it out yet... be careful of buying a used car in the next period of time... many of the damaged cars were moved out of state

Pretty straight forward for us in central PA.  I had secured outside furniture from wind and flood damage, double check emergency lanterns, the generator, got the cords I would need handy to back feed our system, topped off our gas cans and our cars the day before.

We did have a leaky window I was concerned about but it appeared my repair did the trick.

We got a bunch of rain that ponded in our yard but our place is high enough water will flow away from our place than in it.  We both took the day off and relaxed with the kids watch our newly formed lake front property come into being.  No power failure, downed trees or anything that affected our normal operation, just how I like it.

It was a good practice run to check that everything we might need quickly was readily accessible.

Not much in the way of issues here in south-central PA.  We got 8+ inches of rain in one day.  I live in an elevated area, so we had no flooding nearby, no leaks, etc.  But 1/2 mile down the road, at a lower elevation, there is this creek that was really high and close to the road.  I thought it was going to overflow onto the road; it was a close thing.  Across the street from the creek is a retirement community, so those folks could have had a bad day had the rain continued.

The usual places in the area flooded out, about par for the course.  

Sorry to hear about those who did get flooded out of course.  That sucks.

I lucked out (eastern Pa.)  I got about 2" of ground water coming through the foundation.  My pump was able to keep up with it.  The rain stopped around 9:00, but I was up till 2am monitoring the pump till the water stopped coming in.  We got a little over 7" of rain in about 12 hours.  My borough did some flood prevention work after we got hit bad in '06.  Seemed to work.  Some places around me got hit really bad.  One thing people don't think about when trying to cross flooded roads is, that the road may not be under the water anymore.  There were several bridges washed out near me, but the side railings were still there.  It looked like the road was still there.  Another still had the asphalt there, but everything under it was gone.   If you don't have to drive around, DON'T.   I also saw a bunch of manhole covers that blew off.  For some reason people were walking around in knee deep water not knowing that there was a hole in the middle of the road.  That would be a bad day to fall in.

If anyone live near a river that may affect you during a flood, you can monitor the river hights on the USGS website.  There is a river gauge about 3 miles from me.  Look and see how high the river got and see what kind of damage happed so you know for next time.  Rivercast is an app that does the same thing.  You can look at alot of different rivers and compare.