With a Thanksgiving storm barreling this way, there is something you can do right now to try and prevent a potential problem the heavy rains could bring.
Pick up your leaves.
After a gusty weekend, the ground is covered in leaves and those leaves could clog sewer drains even if you raked them into a nice neat pile.
Crews from Delaware to New Jersey are going about planned leaf cleanups today but there is no way to clear all the leaves ahead of the storm, which NBC10 First Alert Weather meteorologist Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz says could drop up to 2 inches of rain on parts of the region.
For the past two weeks the city of Philadelphia has been collecting brown bagged leaves along with regular trash pickup but with the program expected to go through mid-December, there are still plenty of bags of leaves not picked up.
On suburban streets around the Philadelphia region there are also those pesky piles of leaves where people raked leaves onto the edge of lawns and on the side of streets awaiting pickup.
Those leaves can gather around sewer grates and cause a clog that in turns can caused streets to flood.
Green
Experts suggest that ahead of the rain you go outside and pull any leaves that could be impeding drains out of the way -- ideally into a brown paper landscaping bags. While this is no guarantee that other leaves won’t gather, it does ensure that the path is as clear as it can be.
Not only could it help prevent flooding but, as noted by the Philly Bagged Leaf Drive, "this recycling program helps to reduce the amount of materials that reach the waste stream and saves landfill space."
