Some residents of Sydney, N.S., say they haven't seen rain this bad since Thanksgiving Day in 2016 when an unexpectedly heavy downpour flooded scores of homes and public buildings in the region.

On Monday, at least 30 millimetres of rain fell, melting centimetres of snow and ice.

Walter and Jean Doue were filled with anxiety as they watched Wash Brook behind their Union Street home breach its banks. Walter said he stayed up all Sunday night to keep an eye on the brook and to make sure he was ready to move his family if he had to.

"You don't think of anything else," he said as the overflow from the brook crept over his property. "All you're thinking about is, 'Am I going to lose my basement again?'"

The home is just a few blocks away from the area that was hardest hit in the Thanksgiving Day flood, which left some homes in Sydney's south end unsalvageable.

Jean Doue said Wash Brook seemed to be coping with the downpour through the morning. But she knew they were in "trouble" when the water went over the bank and reached sandbags she had placed near the edge a year ago.

"The embankments are covered, trunks of the trees are covered, there's ducks swimming in the neighbour's yard and well, it's up to my sandbags," she said.

Doue said she and her neighbours expected the municipality would do some sort of remedial work at the brook after the Thanksgiving flood. But she said "nothing was done all summer."

"We have a lot of sediment in this brook and that adds to the problem," she said. "It's not the only thing that adds to the problem, but unless something is done with the drainage here in Sydney, this brook will continue to flood."

Not far away on Morrison Street, hair stylist Alma Head was also suffering a case of nerves — and déjà vu. She said the scene looked a little too much like the Thanksgiving Day flood, but she had "a little faith that it's not going to be as bad."

"We just gotta pray on this street that the water slows down," she said.