Another round of storms hit the Baltimore region Thursday evening, including in Ellicott City and other areas still cleaning up from Sunday’s devastating deluge.

And with more storms and flooding risks forecast through Saturday, emergency managers across the state spent Thursday bracing for the threat and urging residents to prepare.

In Ellicott City, Howard County officials have removed 100 truckloads of debris from Main Street in recent days, hoping to clear a path for any downpours in coming days.

Baltimore County officials warned people not to drive through floodwaters, and told residents to be prepared for the worst.

“Because everything is so saturated, the forecast is a concern,” Baltimore County Fire Department spokeswoman Elise Armacost said. “With these kinds of storms we don’t know where the problem areas are likely to be.

“It was Catonsville on Sunday; it could be somewhere else next time,” she said.

Threats of heavy rain are forecast across Maryland through Saturday, with elevated potential for more flooding because the ground is already saturated and streams are already swollen.

The strongest risk for more flooding could come late today, said Brandon Fling, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Baltimore/Washington forecast office.

A cold front is forecast to push a low-pressure system over Maryland by today and Saturday.

Still, flooding is possible each afternoon and evening through Saturday, and the risks are not expected to be focused in any single area, he said.

The concern is that slow-moving thunderstorms could inundate isolated areas, just as they did in Ellicott City in both Sunday’s floods and the 2016 deluge.

“They’re not forecasting 10 inches anywhere, but the caveat is there could be locally heavy showers anywhere, just like we had over the weekend,” said Ed McDonough, a spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. “A thunderstorm could park itself anywhere and just dump ungodly amounts of rain, and that’s what we need to be prepared for.”

If that doesn’t happen, officials said, they don’t expect a major impact from the rain. Forecasters expect a widespread 2 inches to 4 inches of accumulation from Thursday through Saturday.

“That amount of rain is not going to cause the type of issues we saw this past weekend,” said David McMillan, Baltimore’s director of emergency management.

In Ellicott City, officials urged caution and warned residents to be prepared for the worst. They canceled an opportunity for residents and business owners to survey damage Thursday night.

Massive flooding hit the mill town Sunday, leaving one man dead and businesses ravaged less than two years after a July 2016 flood wrecked the historic mill town.

Howard County emergency management director Ryan Miller urged residents to stay alert: “It’s very difficult for them to predict what areas could get localized heavy rainfall.”

In the meantime, cleanup and damage assessment from Sunday’s flood continues. The Federal Emergency Management Agency joined state and local officials Thursday in surveying Ellicott City, Catonsville and the Frederick Avenue corridor in Southwest Baltimore for a possible federal emergency declaration, McDonough said.

Along Main Street in Ellicott City, crews have dug out sand, tree stumps, building debris and even massive historic mill stones from storm drains and culverts, said the county public works director, Jim Irvin. They hung a tarp over a newly exposed cliff along Hill Street to prevent further erosion.

Officials hope that the swift work prevents any heavy rain from causing further flooding. Some curbs and gutters were destroyed in the flooding, so crews also worked to put sandbags in place to help guide any water downhill.

“One blockage and you could have substantial problems,” Irvin said. “That’s one of the reasons we had such devastation” in Sunday’s flooding.

Whether the rain causes further problems in the coming days depends on how intensely it falls, Irvin said. Even heavy rain uphill from downtown Ellicott City could cause problems on Main Street, he said.

“If it comes down in a deluge, we could potentially have flooding again,” Irvin said.

In Southwest Baltimore’s Beechfield neighborhood, where floods stranded more than 20 people on car rooftops and displaced at least six people from their homes, residents were continuing to pump mud out of their basements. Parts of Frederick Avenue remained closed except for local traffic as crews removed debris and patched the damaged street.

In the future, McMillan said, he hopes to improve infrastructure around the area to prevent flooding. His office also will look at the possibility of clearing and widening culverts beneath Frederick Avenue, he said.

In Baltimore County, Armacost said she was not aware of any specific preparations going on to prevent flooding, but said emergency management officials were monitoring the weather closely.

“The ground is just so saturated it just can’t absorb any more, and our streams and creeks are swollen,” she said.

The forecast comes as Ellicott City, still reckoning with the latest round of flood damage, is beginning to explore possible rebuilding for a second time in less than two years.

Irvin said Ellicott City’s recovery four days after the flood is farther along than it was this time in 2016. Contractors began reconstruction Wednesday, he said.

“Our direction is get this done as quick as possible whether it rains or not,” Irvin said.

Howard County Executive Allan H. Kittleman said that despite the county’s efforts to mitigate flooding, it’s impossible to prevent flooding entirely when high volumes of rain fall in a short period of time.

“We can make it less impactful, but we’re not going stop all flooding,” Kittleman said. “We can’t give the assurances to people that, hey, if we get 8 inches of rain, nothing’s going to happen.”

As residents and business owners continue to weigh whether to rebuild, Kittleman said he expected a different discussion than the last time around.

“That’s something we have to have a conversation about,” Kittleman said.

smeehan@baltsun.com

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