County warns of possible street flooding in Huntington

An overhead view of the location of the currently under-construction Huntington Levee.

The National Weather Service has issued a flood warning for Fairfax County effective at 7 p.m. Friday, and there is a chance for street flooding in the Huntington area as rain intensifies in the next 24 hours, according to an alert sent by the county today.

The entire county has been under a flood watch since earlier this afternoon, and officials are asking residents who live on streets prone to flooding to take precautions and move their vehicles to higher ground. The flooding in Huntington typically affects streets north of Huntington Avenue, between Fenwick Drive and Mount Vernon Drive.

The county said the Huntington Metro parking garage is an option for residents who need to move their vehicles, but charges will apply if you exit anytime other than between 2-7 a.m.

The heaviest rain is expected to come down between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday, and residents should be prepared for near constant rain for the next 24 hours. As of 8:30 p.m., the National Weather Service was predicting between 3/4″ to 1″ of rain tonight and 1-2″ of rain during the day Friday.

Preparations for flooding are nothing new for Huntington residents, who have suffered through three major floods since 2002. Flooding from nearby Cameron Run in 2006 left 160 homes uninhabitable for a time, and the neighborhood needed to be evacuated during floods in the summer of 2011. Other smaller storms have caused less damage but left streets flooded and forced residents to move vehicles to higher ground, including storms last July.

Construction on the new $27.8 million Huntington Levee is in progress, but still a ways from completion. In December, construction reached the halfway point of the project, according to updates on the Fairfax County website. The project is expected to be finished in the spring of 2019.