Tut Tut, Looks Like Rain!

Well, the Rains did come, and the Creek did rise!  But not before a credible Tornado warning was issued and the radar showed a very telltale arc in the storm front.  That's about 4 miles northeast of my home.  Lots of thunder, then a burst of rain.  Then no rain and a couple of strong bursts of wind from the northwest, then a sheet or two of rain from the north east, and another several gusts from the east (all as I'm watching from my front door, listening for the sustained "train"sound.)  And then a deluge of rain!  Whatever was happening and how ever close I was to it, the burst of hard rain signaled that it was past. 

Afterwards to the park to see Sligo Creek up to edges of it's embankments, and in someplaces over the lower areas of the flood plains. 

 Here I'm on the first hiker biker bridge and the "falls" you see is caused by a huge tree trunk that floated down the creek during a previous deluge and wedged itself across the creek and parallel to the bridge.

 The actual "normal" bed of the creek is about 7 feet below the underside of that tree trunk and not nearly as wide as what you see here.

If you had come to the park earlier in the day, you could have crossed the creek itself here and not gotten your calves wet!

The hard rain only lasted about 20 minutes, and the volume of water here is just hard to imagine all flowing into the creek from so many sources--many of them neighborhood streets.  This sort of "flood" always sweeps shameful amounts of trash and mostly plastics into the watershed.  All of this is bound for the Anacostia River and then the Potomac, next the Chesapeake Bay and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. 

Here's a brief video of the same place and moment.