On this date in 1944, a calendar-day record 6.14 inches of rain fell as a tropical storm swept through the Mid-Atlantic. The storm had made landfall in North Carolina and passed along the lower Delaware Bay on its way out to sea.
“The heaviest one-day rainstorm in two years drenched Washington yesterday, flooding thousands of basements and street-level homes, cutting off electrical power, and leaving vehicles and soaked pedestrians wallowing in miniature rivers, with police evacuating families from hundreds of temporary houses,” the front page of The Washington Post wrote the next day.
Because the region was in a drought, The Post reported that the Weather Bureau, the predecessor to the National Weather Service, described the storm as “much more beneficial than harmful.”
Here are other notables from this day:
- Average high: 89
- Average low: 72
- Record high: 100 (2002)
- Record low: 55 (1895)
- Record rainfall: 6.14 inches (1944)
