Rain and Flood, 1886

RAIN AND FLOOD.

—From Saturday last till yesterday noon the weather has been; remarkable for rain and snow, and the streams not only in our vicinity but to the south of us as far as the Gulf have been more swollen than at any time since 1877. Trains have been delayed south of the Potomac by washouts and the usual damage wrought along the banks of streams. The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal has been greatly damaged. The towpath on tunnel level is badly washed ; the water-wheel on the five mile level is out; there is a considerable washout on the three-mile level; a break thirty feet long and three feet below the bottom of the canal on the two-mile level; one hundred feet of dam No. 6 is washed away, the break being in the middle of the dam, extending to the bottom and going back at leapt thirty feet; one-half mile on the towpath below the dam on the four-mile level is washed to a depth of three feet into the canal, half-filling it, and numerous other bad washes are reported. In Hagerstown the want of drainage has never been more clearly manifested, as many cellars in the heart of the town are filled with water, and the same trouble has been experienced in Sharpsburg and, no doubt other towns in our county.