I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that where that water is is often a brook (although it is sometimes dry). It generally runs along the south side of the tracks (but there is often water on the north side as well) between the houses on Middlesex Road and the T line. It crosses under the tracks at an underground culvert where the Reservoir Rd. footbridge goes over the tracks, and then flows into the old Waterworks Building, and I believe, into the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. You can see what I'm talking about if you stand on the Reservoir Rd. footbridge and look off the east side. There is a small segment of the brook that is still exposed - and which is probably flowing pretty well just now.

This area (which is a few hundred yards from my home) was historically crisscrossed with brooks - but like most of the others in "Brook"line, they were put into underground culverts in the late 18th Century, when suburbanization really started to take hold. I believe there is a similar situation just east of the Beaconsfield stop as well (I think that brook was larger and is still shown on many of the ward maps from the early 1900s).

I really hope that the T is not already beginning to grasp at straws to justify the shutdown of the entire system. There has got to be a big old tree that is down somewhere across the Riverside line that would make for a more impressive photo.

Didn't

By anon² on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 12:07pm.

This section wash out a year or two back with a normal summer downpour?

There's a lot of herp derp running around right now, and some of it rightfully so since the media was trying to inflate this as much as possible.

But the reality remained that NOAA and the NWS were confident (without all the wargarrble) that we'd be hit by at least a Cat 1 storm until about 12 hours ago.

What changed?

Texas (and the south) injected a lot of hot dry air into Irene:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/sDmXo.jpg)

It literally sheered off the eastern half of the storm and quickly downgraded it overnight. One things hurricanes don't like it hot dry air. It's worse than cold humid air.

12 hours and less is not a good window to make preparations and evacuations, just look back at Katrina. The pols and gov did their best, and made the right call 32 hours out to give people time for what the prediction was at that time. That's fine.

That said, the media needs to go DIAF. They almost seem grumpy that there's not buildings knocked over, on fire, and shit torn up to report on. It's also apparent MBTA is woefully unprepared for the simplest of problems, and something needs to be done. Shutting it down based on the reports 32 hours ago was the right call, but why did they wait until 8:30PM on a Saturday to try to notify people?