UPDATE: Alert blog reader Ken adds this link to a photo gallery for Norfolk Ernesto damage and flooding on the peninsula. I also updated the wind gust and rainfall reports in the previous entry to include a couple more reports issued by AccuWeather meteorologists, including a gust from The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel [JessePedia]. A photo from New Jersey damage is shown below.

The roof is blown off a beachside resturant in Seaside Park, N.J., Saturday, Sept. 2, 2006 after the high winds of Tropical Storm Ernesto. Though New Jersey continued to get drenched by Ernesto, rainfall wasn't as heavy as expected, but a coastal flood warning was in effect for central coast areas in Monmouth and Ocean counties, where the combination of strong winds and afternoon high tides could cause tidal flooding. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

ORIGINAL POST:

With the holiday weekend in full swing and Ernesto on its way out, I was hoping to relax today but no -- Ernesto is still in the news, in a big way, this Saturday morning. NOTE: I added a couple of wind gusts to yesterday's "Greatest Hits" report based on new information from my southern buddy Frank Strait (PREMIUM | PRO).

Ernesto's legacy has worsened overnight, with CNN reporting this morning that 400,000 are without power in the mid-Atlantic due to flooding and downed trees and that three people have been killed by the rainstorm. Dominion Power Company claims that over 600,000 were rendered powerless by the storm in their service area alone, and you can see their current power outage map for eastern Virginia here (about 200,000 were still out as of this writing). They also have a press release saying the storm was "packing more of a punch than originally forecasted" (see Dr. Joe Sobel's (PREMIUM | PRO) blog yesterday for a related story).

The storm is making its way through Pennsylvania and New York this morning. Severe flooding was observed in the Norfolk, Virginia area yesterday and a Hampton Roads newspaper has .

DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE RAINFALL AMOUNTS:

I have posted some additional Doppler-estimated precip maps to the archive but it's getting really difficult to tell on a regional basis how much rain stations in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast have had. The Philadelphia NEXRAD is vastly overestimating the amounts near the outside of the radar's scope and Washington DC is vastly over-reporting the rain here in Centre County because (like in the winter) much of the overrunning precipitation that it detected over us at 15,000 feet didn't reach the ground. The Washington NEXRAD, which is actually in the mountains of Virginia, can't see over the larger mountains, complicating things. So I can post this image with those disclaimers that much of the data is inaccurate.

Unfortunately the U.S. government does not have a dense enough real-time rainfall network mapped out to really tell what's falling in gauges this morning. From what I can tell from USGS, ROMAN and AHPS gauge data, probably what we're looking at is widespread rainfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches being widespread across the mid-Atlantic. It's hard to tell since the USGS doesn't serve the state of Virginia. You can see the rivers at or above flood stage below, and creeks/rivers which are seeing their highest streamflows (blue) and record daily streamflows (black) above. For more specific data, consult the USGS and AHPS sites.

An abandoned vehicle is submerged in an underpass, Friday, Sept. 1, 2006 in Norfolk, Va. Ernesto weakened to a tropical depression as it plowed northward over land Friday, but it still had the punch to lash Virginia with 6 inches of rain, flooding highways, forcing evacuations and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people. (AP Photo/The Virginian-Pilot, Rich-Joseph Facun)

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