Photos: Saturday’s sudden downpour overwhelmed Soapstone and Broad Branch streams

The storms since Saturday’s have caused more damage. Here’s a brief update.

by Marlene Berlin

This summer’s rain storms have been frequent and impressive – last Saturday night’s perhaps most of all.

Beginning just before 8 p.m. on August 12th, The Washington Post’s rooftop weather station at 1301 K Street NW measured .78 inches of accumulated rain in only ten minutes (scroll to the weather history table/graph), and almost an inch in 20 minutes. “That is some torrential rain,” says the Post’s Capital Weather Gang.

Our local streams took a pounding. The stone crossings at the upper level of the Soapstone Trail between the eastern end of Audubon Terrace and Broad Branch Road have been reconfigured. The first crossing heading toward Broad Branch Road has a new pile of large rocks in the middle of the stream. Both the second and third crossing have been narrowed.

This rock pile, in the middle of a Soapstone Stream crossing, wasn’t here before the Saturday, August 12th storm.

At Broad Branch Road there was clear evidence of roadway flooding. Ground foliage was flattened and large logs and a trunk lay against the guardrail, encroaching on the northbound roadway. The area had been roped off by tape and orange cones by the morning.

Flattened Soapstone Valley ground foliage near Broad Branch Road.

Logs block part of Broad Branch Road.

A map of some of the flooding sites

To the north, Broad Branch Stream’s tiny passageway through the culvert under Broad Branch Road was totally stuffed with leaves and and debris, and there were signs the water jumped its banks and flooded the roadway.

The clogged culvert.

The evidence of flooding.

On a brighter note there was a new crop of tadpoles in the sunnier section of the stream and a dragonfly careening above them.

A dragonfly…

…and tadpoles!

The downpour overwhelmed the Linnean Stream pools, which by design, are supposed to collect and slow the rush of stormwater. These rains flooded some areas, washing out parts of the trail and carrying mud onto a split trunk crossing over a feeder stream.

Paul Waters, a neighbor of Linnean Stream, has been in conversation with Steve Saari of the Department of the Environment and Energy about doing more rehabilitation work on the rehabilitated stream. Saari is attempting to address the flooding onto Broad Branch Road at the culvert, as well.