No Rest for the Wet and Weary

"They keep telling you that it's scheduled to be restored at a certain time," he said "When you call at night, they say, it'll be fixed in the morning. When you call in the morning, they say it'll be fixed in the afternoon."

About 2 p.m. yesterday, a crew showed up. Within 21 minutes, power was restored.

"You don't realize what you miss -- all these little things like the coffeemaker," said a relieved Blandford, enjoying the cold blast coming from the air conditioner.

Two barns were destroyed in St. Mary's County yesterday evening by what people in the Choptico area said was a tornado. Authorities said they were investigating.

A resident of the area, Pat Riffle, said he saw a "white wall of water coming toward us." After the barns were destroyed, he said, debris was scattered to "every point of the compass," suggesting the rotating winds of a tornado.

"We definitely had a tornado," said Joyce Cusic of Cusic Mechanic Service on Manor Road in Choptico. She said trees went down, and "we're saying big trees."

In addition, she said, "I have tin from the neighbors' barns all over the back yard and the front yard."

She said she had been about to go out for a walk shortly before 6 p.m., but her dog refused to go. "That's what saved me," she said.

In Alleghany County in the western part of Virginia, rescuers searched for an 8-year-old girl swept away by floodwaters, the Associated Press reported. The child went missing shortly before 2 p.m., according to Ryan Muterspaugh, the county's public safety director.

Farmers on the waterlogged Eastern Shore dealt with the remains of as many as 80,000 chickens that drowned.

The Potomac will continue to rise today and probably will crest tomorrow, but forecasters were not projecting significant flooding.

Officials in Alexandria were bracing for a possible surge of water created by heavy rainfall north and west of the Washington area that could travel down the Potomac and reach the District by tonight, spokesman Brian Hannigan said. That could endanger riverfront homes and businesses in Old Town.