Roads across the Cape and Islands have been closed Tuesday morning after heavy rain fell over a short period of time.
There were also scattered power outages, with roughly 2,000 without electricity as of Tuesday morning.
National Weather Service says that close to three inches of rain fell since Monday in some parts of the Cape and Islands, with a big chunk of that over a six-hour period Tuesday morning.
As of about 11, that rain still had not abated, and the weather service was expecting more rain to come from the South which could last another few hours.
Local officials were asking the public to drive carefully and obey signs closing off sections of roadways.
In Falmouth, multiple roads were closed including portions of Main Street where rain had inundated some sections. Falmouth Heights was hit particularly hard.
“If you encounter a puddle or flooded roadway, please do not attempt to drive through it. Stay safe!” read a message from the Falmouth police department.
Not everyone had obeyed the message or signs.
In front of the Falmouth Heights Motor Lodge, a Ford Mustang and a BMW sport-utility vehicle were both stalled along the main road into the village after trying to get through a large section of road that had flooded. Neither of the owners nor passengers were on site. Water had reached the Mustang’s rear bumper and the tires were nearly covered. Witnesses say that the passenger in the Mustang had to basically swim out of her side window.
Maureen Kelly, manager at the Motor Lodge and whose family has owned the business since 1969, was on the lodge’s front porch Tuesday morning watching traffic occasionally try to travel through the flooded road.
Kelly said that she has seen worse, but this amount of flooding was uncommon for the section of road.
“You are looking at almost another ocean. We have waves out here,” she told this reporter, pointing to the flooded roadway just feet from the motel’s front step, partially littered with stalled vehicles waiting for rescue. “This is not common.”
Guests of the motor lodge were out front taking in some of the action as well, as they didn’t have much else to do. Kelly said they hadn’t gotten word from authorities when the roads may be cleared, noting that it could be some time before her guests were able to get out of the parking lot.
Meanwhile, power outages began to trickle in Tuesday morning starting around 6 am. At first, Chatham had been hit with a large outage. But later in the morning, an Eversource spokesperson said that the biggest concentration of outages was in Dennis, where over 800 were impacted.
“Our crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore fewer than 2,000 scattered outages on the Cape and Islands caused by the stormy weather passing through the region,” said Kaitlyn Woods, External Communications Manager with the utility. “As always, we encourage our customers to stay far away from any downed power lines and report them immediately to 911.”
Some of the outages across the Cape have been caused by tree limbs coming down, but Eversource was still investigating the cause of the Dennis outage.
As of 11, the National Weather Service had not reported any widespread damage from flooding.
