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This morning it started raining off and on about 3:30 am. From about 7:30 am until 11 am, it rained really hard. We knew it was laying down the water, but we didn’t have any idea just how much until Richard and I took a walk to see how high the stream was. Then we checked the two rain gauges. We realized they just weren’t made for that much water as they filled as much as they could with the remaining rain splashing out.
Pleasant Hope, a town just a few miles east of us, was mentioned in the national news as all roads leading into town were flooded along with much of the town itself. A new bridge (just completed) into town was washed out. They received 15 inches of rain in 4 hours! The city of Bolivar was on the north edge of the main brunt of the storm, and they just received 5 inches of rain. We left the house to drive Garland back to Clinton and turned on the radio. That’s when we found out that Highway 13 between Bolivar and Springfield was closed in 3 places due to high water over the road! We got to Hwy 13 and had to make a detour because water was over the road just where we needed to drive. Luckily, we were heading north, and the bulk of the rain was to the south of Bolivar. At Morrisville, just a few miles south of us, the Little Sac River went from 3 feet on a gauge at 8:30 am to 21 feet at 11:30 am (the record there is 23.3 feet). Several people were caught in the flash flooding and washed off the roads. One woman was trapped in her house with her baby and called for rescue from the second story of the house. Rescuers were delayed in getting to her because all roads leading to her house were well under water. We were very lucky here that our house is nice and high. The roads were even ok to get out, though we did drive through water over the road in several places I’ve never seen it over before. |
