I'm just south of Reading Pa, we got a ton of rain but thankfully no wind. Lost power for 14 or so hours and the creek that runs through my property turned into a legit river. Had over 3 feet of water in my yard and moved a 12x20 garage/shed that was full of my tools, project motorcycles, and 2 engines of 40 feet before a tree stopped it.
My wife put the chickens away at 715pm and their pen/coop was no where near the water, at 830 when we checked there was 3 plus feet of rapid water and we had to move the chickens as shortly later the coop got sweeped away along with the fencing(4 foot horse fence with 8 foot heavy t posts.
I'm 40 mins north of Philadelphia and had a little water in the basement but nothing crazy. A literal rapid river was running in front of my house. There was one tornado about 15 minutes south of here and another 25 minutes to the east. The one 15 minutes away looked like a war zone.
I got incredibly lucky. I'm in central PA (Harrisburg) and aside from the insane rain (6 inches or so in 12 hours) I did really well. The river is near cresting now and had some substantial impact downtown, but my house is 6 miles up into the suburbs. The smart folks who monitor river things are actually a bit perplexed as to why the river didn't rise far more than predicted, but we'll take the win.
My house is circa 1900 and I normally get some water in the basement every time it rains so I expected flooding down there but only had about an inch. Very lucky. Two trips up the steps with the shop vac and setting the dehumidifier to 20% has it mostly dry down there with no damage. The only power outage I had was a few seconds of no power. Just long enough to make the clocks blink and cause me to lose a forum post I was trying to add. I had the generator ready for the fridge but didn't need it.
In fact, the worst thing that happened to me was that I didn't have an opportunity to mow before the rain, so 6" of water plus the following day of sun, plus having to wait another day until it was dry enough... I now have what looks like a freshly-mowed hay field as a yard.
VERY lucky here, personally. I would go as far as to say blessed. No wind damage, no water damage, only missed one day of things (which I used to clean my house) so I call it a win. Very sad that it wasn't for many.
My sister lives near York PA and I'll show you her conundrum:
She lives by a creek which is normally a babbling brook. They stock it with trout but it's not even really big enough for trout. Here is a picture of her normally-1-ft creek at 4 feet the day after:
But here is what it was like during the worst. Notice she is on her deck which is 8' high and their back yard is a significant downhill to the creek. The creek is also normally 100 yards behind their deck.
You'll also notice... the bridge in the second picture is 6' above the creek normally... and also notice in the first picture how the bridge is now relocated 50 yards downstream.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
That's pretty much what my creek looked like. Just got told by the township that the dam upstream from me was damaged and currently being asset.
I drove into NYC on the Major Deegan yesterday and at one point, I noticed three cars parked facing into traffic on the shoulder, which seemed odd. Then a few parked perpendicular to the roadway. And then a bunch that were either upside down, on top of other cars, or on their side. Many had broken glass and mud lines up to the windshield.
I realized that I had driven into a location that I had seen on the national news. They were still towing away the flood damaged cars three days later.
