The rain may have given way to partially cloudy skies late Sunday afternoon, but those clouds won’t make way for the sun anytime soon. As another day of rain and flash flood watches came to a close, weather forecasters only had more bad news for a region already drenched from days of seemingly endless downpours and impressive thunder and lightning.
“We’re certainly in a wet weather pattern,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Weather Service in Silver Spring. “They’ll be a chance of rain all week … and during the early part of the week the chances of rain are going to be above average. We won’t go completely dry until maybe Sunday.”
The rains will move on, Feltgen said, when the stalled cold front to the city’s west moves on.
“Wherever the front happens to stall it’s kind of like an atmospheric tug-of-war,” he said. “The problem is behind the front the air is slightly cooler and dryer and ahead is very warm, wet and unstable air. So right along that front is where you’re going to have a focus of showers and thunderstorms.”
While no major incidents were reported as a result of the heavy rains, many counties remained under flash-flood watches Sunday evening. Both Fauquier and Prince William Counties had flash flood warnings Sunday.
“The thing that I would emphasize is people should be alert to the threat of flash flooding,” Feltgen said. “Turn around, don’t drown.”
The on-and-off rains meant many Washington-area residents spent much of the weekend hunkered down at home. That’s good news for area movie rental stores, which often see decreased business during the sunny summer months.
“On the weekends it’s always busy, but especially when it rains,” said Omar Juarez, a shift manager at a Hollywood Video in Arlington. Juarez estimates rentals increase by about 50 percent on rainy weekends. “Since they can’t go outside, they’d rather stay in and watch a movie.”
How wet is it?
About .14 inches of rain fell Saturday at Reagan National Airport ,where only about 3.5 inches had fallen for all of June.
