Between Saturday and Tuesday, about 5.16 inches of rain were recorded at the Department of Disaster Management in MacNamara, DDM Director Sharleen DaBreo said.

Most of it — about 3.38 inches — fell on Monday, leading to flooding in low-lying and coastal areas around Tortola, she added.

“The problem is that you had the week before where you had very light rainfall that occurred over a period of time,” she said. “You had rainfall over the entire week, so the ground was very saturated.”

After more than an hour of torrential rain on Monday, accompanied by gusts of wind that Ms. DaBreo estimated at 20-25 miles per hour, much of Tortola was flooded, and several trees had fallen.

As a steady rain fell in Road Town, a police jeep was parked at the roundabout, and an officer was directing cars away from Flemming Street, which was flooded with several inches of water. A 30-foot-tall tree had fallen across Admin Drive in front of the Central Administration Building.

In Pasea Estate, several trees and some power lines were down on the Blackburne Highway, and a sign and several poles had fallen at the Delta gas station.

Nearby, one to three inches of muddy water flowed rapidly down the small road between Johnsons Ghut and the Blackburne Highway.

Besides Road Town, other areas most affected included Pockwood Pond, Hannahs, Fish Bay, and other low-lying locations, Ms. DaBreo said. Besides flooding, the most significant damage included rockslide, fallen trees and a few vehicles that got stuck in floodwaters.

Four Sea Cows Bay apartments were flooded with mud and water on Monday, as was a house in Hawks Nest near Balsam Ghut, she added. Meanwhile, a rock wall collapsed in the Bellevue area, and a large boulder fell and rolled down Joes Hill.

A tourist who was travelling to the airport reportedly was injured when two rocks fell from an East End hillside and damaged her car.

“She injured her hip and had to be hospitalised,” Ms. DaBreo said, citing police information.

And, even before Monday’s rains, a retaining wall collapsed last week, crushing two unoccupied vehicles in the Brady Ghut area in East End.

The sister islands, which experienced minor flooding on Monday, were spared extensive damage, according to the DDM director.

The storm, which defied forecasters’ predictions, was similar in many ways to the storm that flooded the territory six years ago to the month.

“You had a cold front going through the area,” Ms. DaBreo explained. “There was a high pressure system above it and two troughs surrounding it, and the high pressure system did not move out of the area as the forecasters had expected.”

Thus, the front was locked in place, causing the downpour.

“When we checked it over the weekend, we were told that by Sunday night the high pressure system was expected to weaken, but it didn’t weaken until [Monday] evening,” Ms. DaBreo added. “And that’s the exact situation that we had in November 2003.”

About 20 inches of rain fell here from Nov. 9-22, 2003, with the highest rainfall for one day being 8.4 inches, according to DDM.

About $20 million in damages resulted, a figure that likely will dwarf this week’s costs.

The full story appears in the Nov. 19, 2009 issue.