Timeline: Day 3, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011
After a day of flooding, it got worse.
Heavy downpours led to water rescues in Tharptown and on the Knoebels Parkway in the darkness just after midnight.
Meanwhile, Shamokin Creek flooded Shamokin for a second straight day.
In addition to a rash of road closings, practically all major bridges in the region were closed, with the exception of the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Sunbury, and Geisinger Medical Center implemented emergency protocols. Seven large but mostly empty oil silos would topple this day, too, at the Duke Heating Oil property at Weigh Scales, apparently from water washing away their foundations.
Attention would begin to focus on the Susquehanna River, where predictions of record-setting crests would cause growing alarm and more comparisons to the 1972 Hurricane Agnes flood. Later that day, the river would reach 32.75 feet in Bloomsburg, topping a record from 1904. Sunbury's crest was 31.66 feet, second only to Agnes, but safely below the 35-foot, 8-inch top of the flood wall.