Swampscott received 5.73 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. In Peabody, the total was 4.55 inches, followed by Beverly at 4.30 inches, and Salem at 4.23 inches. There appeared to be no injuries or reports of emergency rescues.
“I don’t think we were anticipating this amount of rain in this amount of time,’’ said Kim Buttrick, a National Weather Service meteorologist. The thunderstorms, most landing between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., spiraled out of a low-pressure area that had marched north from the New Jersey coast.
The Weather Service had forecast rain, Buttrick said, but not the succession of torrential thunderstorms that raked the region.
In Swampscott, Mike Ciola figured the heavy morning rain was just another storm. In a matter of seconds, his commute changed from routine to hair-raising. After noticing that Paradise Road was beginning to flood, the car in front of him stalled, and Ciola pulled into a parking lot where his vehicle was engulfed in 5 feet of water.
“The water was up to my doorknobs and coming in through the engine compartment,’’ said Ciola, who pushed open the door of his sport utility vehicle and waded to higher ground before catching his breath.
With just one road open on the way out of town and the rest of the main thoroughfares closed, commuters sat in Swampscott traffic for two hours while hundreds of residents called town officials to report that their basements had flooded. Dozens of homes lost power.
Andrew Maylor, Swampscott town administrator, said he expected millions of dollars in damage to his seaside community, where the storm coincided with a high tide that backed up the drainage system.
“It’s the kind of impact you wouldn’t expect from a nonwind event,’’ Maylor said. “This seems a little bit Gulf Coast-like.’’
A Swampscott elementary school closed for the day, and other schools opened two hours late.
Few sections of town were left unscathed. With stretches of main streets under water and detours throughout town, Swampscott’s normally quiet streets buzzed with electric water pumps and emergency generators.
