'Flood City, USA': The Sorrowful Tale of Ellicott City, Maryland

摘要

Back in July 2016, historic Ellicott City in north-central Maryland experienced a devastating flash flood, and it took years to rebuild the city. On May 27,2018, the same disaster happened again. Ruined once more, Ellicott City endured an hours-long cloudburst that drowned the town. Call it "Flood City, USA" for a location that has drowned 15 times, at the hand of a great many storms, since 1768.Figure 1 shows the devastatingly small pocket of extreme rain that befell a small region of central Maryland, bracketing Ellicott City and Catonsville. The rain accumulation map comes from weather radar observations over a nearly three-hour period.The radar is located in Loudon County, operated by the National Weather Service, on the edge of Dulles airport.