That Was One Heck of a Thunderstorm. Everyone OK Out There?
Decatur Metro | August 8, 2014 | 3:37 pm
Decatur Squared reported on Twitter…
Visible smoke reported at the 911 dispatch center in
#DecaturGA. This does not bode well for the rest of the afternoon.
Also Will sent along this pic via Twitter of construction cones floating away in the flood along Commerce Drive.
Use this thread to post your own observations/updates.
That was one of the strongest storms in recent memory. Wow.
RMS and DHS holding students at school for the moment.
Reports of three feet of water on Commerce btwn Clairemont and WPdL. THREE feet!
Report of power lines down 400 block W. Parkwood
Reports that the lights at W. Howard and Paden Cir and Paden and East Lake *completely* out.
That was freaky.
We are on N. Decatur (in the “handle”) and it all broke loose hit just as elementary school bus was headed over. It looked like eastbound lanes might have some flooding because I saw lots of cars putting on flashers and stopping to make left turns.
Just saw firetrucks go by in both directions.
Check out the radar time lapse on your weather apps – a cell from the West converged with a cell from the South right on top of us. Could have been a lot worse.
It looks like another cell is on it’s way. Heck the weather and be safe!
It really blew me away!
About to go pick up my kid from College Heights. If I’m not back by dawn… call the President.
What are your favorite weather apps? I’m still using the old fashioned Internets. AccuWeather is the best I can find, and it isn’t very user friendly.
The site Forecast is my favorite. Simple and accurate!
I like Intellicast a lot
For Android, I find Arcus very useful and usually quite accurate. For iPhone, a neighbor strongly recommends Dark Sky. Both are hyper-local and up-to-the-minute.
Both Arcus and Dark Sky use the API from the aforementioned Forecast.io.
Simply the best point forecast, period. It beats staring at animated weather radar trying to see if that red blotch is moving your way. I bike commute regularly and have found Arcus / Forecast.io super accurate in helping me dodge the raindrops. In particular, I love the Arcus plot of both probability of rain and estimated amount of rain for the next 2 hours.
Otherwise, the hourly data plot on weather.gov really can’t be beat for telling you everything you want to know in one concise plot.
I like Weatherbug for my iPhone.
MyRadar – for IOS or Android. Scary accurate radar. Has saved my bacon many times.
I like the WSB tv weather app. Local radar and up to date.
Does anyone know if RMS is still holding the students? I picked the wrong day to commute into the office…
Buses were late. RMS released kids after the all clear. I did a pick up at 4:10 and roads were still flooded.
The scariest was at 3:18 when the rain suddenly stopped and the wind was crazy and then I heard the train sound.
Because the train was making its way through town. Thanks RMS for keeping them safe!
Thank you, Kathy. I am relieved the train sound was in fact a train! I kept waiting for a follow up RMS eBlast and it never came… Finally, the new 6th grader texted me back with his location. All is well again.
I too assumed that since no update came, the students were still being held, so my husband went to get our RMS kid. Apparently she had already left. Argh.
I heard that noise at exactly that time too. Thank you for letting us know it was the train! Usually we don’t hear it this far north in the afternoon, and it totally flipped me out! (As I was sitting in my car waiting on my 4 yr old on the bus.)
I rushed home in blinding rain and frightening lightning and the usual backed up traffic only to get to the bus stop when all was calm and hear “Ah, Mom, I didn’t want you to come…” Of course, when I said, you had the key with you, right?, I got “Oops, I left in my locker.”
Hi DM. Your house on Ridgeland had a huge tree fall on my and my neighbor’s house. Can you come to the street?
Hi Nicole, sorry to hear about your house! But I don’t live on Ridgeland.
Does DM live on Ridgeland? Or doesn’t he? is this a huge misdirect to conceal his identity? Or is someone on Ridgeland impersonating DM? Or are there more than one DMs? These are truly the questions that will pique (see what I did there?) Decatur’s interest and stir the rumor mill!
DM. Nicole is thinking of David Kell who used to run another Decatur website. Our neighbor Tanya apparently left her driveway moments before the tree came down on it. Took out a pole and damaged Nicole’s home. We are not going to have power for awhile. But thankfully no one was hurt.
Yikes! Glad to hear everyone is OK. Thanks for clarifying.
This NOAA website loads quickly and provides real time moving weather radar. I saved the website to the home screen on my iPhone so it’s like having an app that quickly shows me weather radar. http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/southeast_loop.php
Power was out here briefly at around 9:30 PM; now back on. Great opportunity to reload fresh batteries into all lanterns and flashlights, plus do some major dusting of all of them. I don’t think our battery backup device works well. It seemed to have enough juice to power our printer but not our wireless router. But I couldn’t ask you guys for help because I couldn’t get to internet…..
We’re there any other trees down? What caused the massive power outage from about 9:20 – 10:00? Everything was dark along Scott and Clairmont, south of the YMCA. It seemed to only be raining lightly at that time.
Heard the area around the new CSD Central Office was hard hit by the flooding–almost to the point of water entering cars. There’s a reason, I guess, that the area was called “The Bottoms” in the old days, pre-urban renewal. Plus roof leak–you often don’t see the flaws in new construction until it first rains hard! At least you know where old roofs leak.
Drove around there this morning and you can kind of see where there might have been problems last night. Saw some work being done around the curbs–maybe it’s related to the flooding? Drains? But the new building does look nice. Can’t help but wish that it had been planned and built way back in 2003-2004 instead of the decision to move Central Office to either Westchester or Clairemont, both of which had been recently renovated as elementary schools.
We live in an old house and still never had a leak until that rain yesterday!
Emptied my rain gauge at 3 pm. By 4:15 had nearly 2.5 inches!
We had 3 inches.
Oy. More thunder tonight. Just lit a candle.
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