Be careful if you're planning to go anywhere tonight...

[narya.livejournal.com]

...and beware of Lake Cedar Street.





That's right near the intersection of Cedar St and Summer. (The people who got there before me said they called the city and the owners of the parked cars also showed up and moved them.)

Edited to add: Also, my roommate reports that Cherry St is a river and that Highland is also pretty bad (but not as bad as Cedar).

There are a few more pictures here but most of them are pretty bad quality.

Edited further to add: That picture was taken at about 5:45 (maybe a bit later). As of 7pm, the water appears to be pretty much gone and the road surface is visible again.

Comments

[ifotismeni]

been having similar problems out in waltham as well. i have pictures of it x___x

are the drains not cleaned properly this year or something? it boggles the mind how the streets are flooding this badly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

The storm drains can only handle so much flow, even when properly cleaned and sized. Engineers make a decision on how big to build the drains ($) by how likely they are to see a certain rainfall intensity (1in./h versus 1ft./hr). I don't know how likely it is that these drains are properly sized or maintained (for Somerville? not likely), but it is also highly likely that the rainfall intensity from this freak storm simply exceeded their drainage capacity.

[ifotismeni]

this happened in several locations in waltham yesterday on fairly new roads. it didn't seem to me like we got that much rain out there yesterday.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

We probably didn't get that much rain from this storm either -- it just rained really really really fast.

It's the rate at which it rains as much as how much rains. the fact that newer roads with (assumed) properly sized storm drains were overwhelmed gives you an idea of just how hard it came down.

Other factors, like lack of maintenance and improperly sized drains can also matter.

[reverend-jim.livejournal.com]

A great deal of Somerville's drainage system dates to the 1800's. (That's why Washington St. @ McGrath, under the railroad bridge, will flood with even moderate rainfall.) They're apparently working on it as the opportunity arises (i.e. they need to tear up a road for other reasons), but it's a sloooow process.