The result: about half a foot of rain in the eastern parts of both states and more than two feet of snow in their western counties.
Snowfall in West Virginia that melts in the coming days could exacerbate flooding in Washington area rivers.
While many local residents dealt with power outages and uprooted trees, Washingtonians were mostly fortunate to be spared the brunt of superstorm Sandy.
Sandy’s impact.
“We need to be mindful of what could happen over the next 48 hours,” D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said. “Our main threats are continued flooding.”
About 3 billion gallons of sewage overflows from the city’s system each year. It is considered such a serious pollutant that the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority is making a $2.6 billion investment to correct it.
About 12 million gallons of sewage escaped from a troubled Howard County wastewater treatment plant into the Little Patuxent River on Monday and Tuesday after a power outage shut the facility down.
That refuse from toilets, garbage disposals, dishwashers and washing machines will be driven downstream into the Chesapeake Bay as the rivers are flooded with runoff from four to 10 inches of rain. Officials warned people to avoid contact with the contaminated river water.
Floodwaters in the Potomac were expected to peak at six feet above flood stage by Wednesday evening.
By 9 p.m. Tuesday, near high tide, runoff in Old Town Alexandria had advanced about halfway into the first block of King Street, a common occurrence there in major storms. Storefronts were fortified with sandbags.
But for the most part, the Washington region has so far been spared widespread flood damage and danger, although some roads remained closed by high water. Dozens of roads were closed in Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. In Prince William County, road blockages were caused by fallen trees and power lines, not flooding.
In downtown Annapolis, the harbor inundated an adjacent parking lot and flooded some nearby merchants, necessitating the closure of several surrounding streets. In some places, the water appeared to be about a foot deep. But many residents said that they had expected worse and that the flooding was nothing compared with that of Hurricane Isabel, which submerged much of lower downtown Annapolis in 2003.
“This is pretty much typical,” said Pat Horn, 64, an Annapolis resident since 1987. “This can happen here after any big rainstorm.”
Fairfax County authorities lifted a mandatory evacuation order for the flood-prone Huntington area Tuesday morning once high tide had passed and it became clear there would be no flooding. On Monday night, they had ordered about 100 residents off of two streets, Arlington Terrace and Fenwick Drive, to leave their homes.
Some residents thought they could have stayed.
“If the county is so concerned about our safety, they should have done something a long time ago,” said Martha Aramayo, a retired government worker who refused to abandon her home Monday night. “I told them, ‘No, I’m staying,’ and I did. If they want to do something to help me, they can build the levee.”
In Howard, the major spill in the Little Patuxent was one of at least 19 hurricane-related sewer overflows in Maryland, state officials said. They estimated that 1 million to 2 million gallons per hour gushed from the Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant in Savage, near the Anne Arundel County line, during the blackout late Monday and early Tuesday.
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