Heavy Thunderstorms Cause Flooding, Lightning Sparks Fires

Heavy thunderstorms and lightning strikes overnight caused street flooding, house fires in Arlington and Gaithersburg and traffic signal outages at some key D.C. intersections, authorities said.

The deluge of rain -- more than an inch in some places -- was a welcome break for gardeners and farmers from the dry weather that has dominated July.

Traffic was snarled Friday morning at the intersection of New York and Florida avenues in Northeast Washington, because signal lights were not working, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Transportation said. Signals were also out at South Dakota Avenue and Bladensburg Road in Northeast, and at Pennsylvania and Southern avenues in Southeast.

The transportation spokeswoman, Karyn LeBlanc, said 20 trees were reported down across the city.

Rainfall totals were still being tallied, but the National Weather Service said accumulations included 0.63 inches in Sterling and a whopping 3.83 inches in Damascus. Showers are expected to continue through Saturday, said Jared Klein, a National Weather Service meteorologist. The seven-day forecast includes chances of afternoon showers every day.

The storm was believed responsible for injuries to a 42-year-old golfer at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, who apparently was nearby when lightning struck on the course Thursday afternoon. The unidentified man suffered injuries "consistent with a near-strike" of lightning, said a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. He was taken to Suburban Hospital.

Later in the afternoon, lightning apparently struck near a chimney on Owens Glen Way in Gaithersburg, starting an attic fire that firefighters quickly brought under control, according to Assistant Chief Scott Graham, the Montgomery fire service spokesman.

A house fire caused by lightning was reported in the 4700 block of Rock Spring Road in Arlington County as well.

Heavy rains flooded the intersection of Nannie Helen Burroughs and Minnesota avenues NE in the District, as well as other city streets. Several cars were stranded, and the road was shut down for more than an hour, D.C. police said.

The deluge was reminiscent of the rain that washed through the area for much of May and into late June, and seemed at times as though it would never go away.

But July brought such an extended dry spell that some people found themselves asking for what would have been unthinkable just a month ago:

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