Flooding

The National Weather Service is calling for Friday to be rainy in the Baltimore area, with a high near 90 and northeast winds 5 to 7 miles per hour in the afternoon. There is a 90 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. New rainfall amounts between one half of an inch and three quarters of an inch are possible. A flash flood watch is in effect Friday afternoon and evening for the Baltimore area. Forecasters say some of the thunderstorms could become severe, and that the primary threat is damaging wind gusts.

As excitement builds for this week's opening of the Summer Olympics, many an armchair athlete may yearn to hop a transcontinental flight to London. But if a trip overseas isn't in the cards right now, why not discover a taste of jolly olde England closer to home? The nation's capital offers its own brand of proper British attractions, dining and lodging, say experts, suitable for even the most discerning Anglophile. "There are actually quite a few similarities between Europe and Washington, D.C., and one can certainly discover elements of British culture close to home," says Georgia Johnson Kicklighter of American Express Travel.

Back-to-back thunderstorms dumped a torrent of rain on Baltimore City and surrounding counties Thursday evening, causing widespread flooding of city streets and some buildings and grounding dozens of flights at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Parts of the region saw close to 21/2 inches of rain between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., a National Weather Service spokesman said. Emergency calls began pouring into city fire and emergency dispatch centers as streets and intersections filled with standing water, particularly in Fells Point, where water reached people's knees in some areas.

For those of us who lived through the flooding caused by Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972, the recent recollections in The Aegis and The Record brought back memories of those days from June 19 through June 24, 1972. For me, I was 20 years old and living over the Cash Loan Building in Havre de Grace, but my parents lived on South Main Street in Port Deposit and they owned Winchester's Bar and Restaurant at that time. On that particular Friday night, my husband, then-fiance Rick, was bartending for my dad at Winchester's right before the mandatory town-wide evacuation.

Forty years later, records from Tropical Storm Agnes still stand. But the records barely tell the story. As measured at BWI Marshall Airport, June 1972 saw a record 9.95 inches of rain. June 21 and 22, meteorologists measured 2.19 inches of rain and 3.84 inches of rain, respectively. BWI, known as Friendship Airport at the time, reported a "surprisingly low" rain total of 6.62 inches from Agnes, according to a Sun article June 30, 1972. Elsewhere, the rain approached 15 inches.

The National Weather Service has issued a coastal flood warning for Anne Arundel County, effective through 6 a.m. Wednesday. High tides are expected to be 2 feet above normal, causing "moderate coastline inundation," the warning says. A coastal flood warning means the flooding is expected to be imminent. Any flooding is expected in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. High tides are expected as follows: 12:58 a.m. at the Thomas Point Shoal Light House at the mouth of the South River; 1:01 a.m. in Edgewater on the South River; 1:04 a.m. at Shady Side on the West River; 1:32 a.m. at theU.S.

Carroll County Public Schools said it was dismissing students at 4:15 p.m. in the wake of a tornado warning that passed through Carroll County. School officials are reminding parents that the dismissals are one and a half hours behind schedule. All school activities are canceled for Friday. Earlier, Carroll County Public Schools has said it would hold students at their schools until the tornado warning had been lifted for Carroll County. The National Weather Service tornado warning passed at 3:45 p.m. for much of Carroll, although a warning still existed until 5 p.m. in Millers and Lineboro.

County officials are urging residents to purchase insurance policies if their homes have recently been added to newly redrawn flood insurance rate maps. The Federal Emergency Management Agency worked with Maryland's Department of the Environment to overhaul the statewide maps, which show which homes and businesses are most susceptible to flooding, and thus are generally required to buy flood insurance . In Howard County, the maps have not changed since 1986. Because of better technology, an additional 360 residences and 130 other structures near rivers and streams will be identified as being at risk of flooding, unless their owners appeal.

The coastal flood advisory that has been in effect for parts of the Chesapeake Bay the last two mornings is a result of the full moon and sustained winds, according to the National Weather Service. Tides a foot higher than normal are expected, and have already been seen in lower parts of the bay. The U.S. Naval Academy's first high tide was at 7:47 a.m., Fort McHenry's was at 9 a.m. and Havre de Grace's around noon. High tides are expected again at 7:51 p.m. in Annapolis, 9:26 p.m. at Fort McHenry, 10:18 p.m. at Bowley's Quarters and 12:46 a.m. at Havre de Grace.

One to two inches of rain is possible Sunday and precipitation will continue into Monday, according to the National Weather Service. On Saturday night, a cold front that's associated with an upper level low pressure system is expected to come into the Baltimore metro area and bring precipitation from the Great Lakes region, said Calvin Meadows, a meteorological technician at the NWS Sterling office. When a surface level low pressure system that is moving up the Atlantic coast from the Carolinas reaches the Baltimore area Sunday afternoon, it will trigger widespread and heavy precipitation, he said.