Bulk of Flooding Expected in Old Town, Washington Harbour

During flooding caused by Hurricane Fran in September 1996, the Potomac River crested in Georgetown at 13.75 feet, and it reached 17.72 feet during a record flood in October 1942.

By contrast, the crest in Georgetown for this week's event was likely to be between seven and nine feet during high tide late tomorrow morning and again tomorrow evening, a prediction which, if it holds, would not be expected to cause major damage, forecasters said. At the Wisconsin Avenue gauge in Georgetown, seven feet is considered a minor flood and eight feet a moderate flood. Major damage could begin at 10 feet.

Still, the record rainfall, combining with a storm surge, was likely to cause minor to moderate flooding along the tidal Potomac, including in Old Town Alexandria, according to forecasters and hydrologists. Yesterday evening, water was over the edge at Washington Harbour in Georgetown, where the floodwall had been raised to protect shops and restaurants.

Rich Hitchens, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service, cautioned that the projections might change. "The rain's not done yet," Hitchens said, as tropical rain approached Washington.

A major reason for the relatively low level of Potomac flooding expected is the near-drought conditions that preceded the rain. Last week, the Potomac River at Little Falls was running at less than a quarter of its normal June flow.

"We started the week in a very, very dry condition," said Jim Kolva, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "We were at a rainfall deficit, the ground was dry. Quite simply, a lot of the rainfall soaked right into the ground."

The flow at Little Falls yesterday was about 30,000 cubic feet per second, more than three times normal. Hitchens projected that Little Falls might reach its flood stage of 10 feet tomorrow, but it is not expected to reach anywhere close to the 19.29 feet reached during the January 1996 flood, caused by melting snow pack, which severely damaged the C&O Canal.

Had this week's rain come at a different time of the year -- in the winter instead of a dry summer -- the story might be different, Kolva said. "The trees and vegetation were stressed," he said. "With them in full leaf, a lot of the water was soaked up."

From 7 a.m. Friday through 8 a.m. yesterday, 12.11 inches of rain had been recorded at Reagan National Airport. "This amount of rain in four days should occur once every 200 years, and we just lived through it," said Jim Lee, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Sterling.

Another major factor for the lack of expected major flooding is that the high rainfall totals in the Washington region were not spread over the vast Potomac River watershed, which drains 14,670 square miles, including portions of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District.

"Those kind of rainfall totals, first of all, didn't happen over the entire basin," Kolva said. "Some areas got one or two inches. The system is able to absorb that."