Mother Nature dumped nearly 16 inches of rain during a seven-day span in the county. Here’s a brief look at how the weather and ensuing flooding affected the area:
-Court proceedings last Wednesday at the Texas County Justice Center were cancelled because attorneys were unable to get to Houston due to high water and closure of Interstate 44.
Traffic gridlock occurred in Houston due to the closure. Normally busy U.S. 63 became a slow crawl of big rigs and vehicles.
-Many members of Intercounty Electric Cooperative lost power during the storms. Two outages on Aug. 3 affected 1,280 homes from Cabool to northern Mountain Grove and another 826 in Mountain Grove. On Aug. 6, Intercounty said 748 members lost power at 3:08 a.m. near Licking, Salem and Edgar Springs. The following morning, there were 593 homes without power due to lightning in areas near Rolla, St. James, Licking and Roby.
Intercounty’s Karen McNew said no workers were injured nor equipment destroyed during the storms.
“I know there were some longer times before we could get power back on because we couldn’t get to a breaker or a station because of high water,” McNew said. “But we didn’t lose any equipment or have anybody get stuck, so we were pretty lucky.”
-Texas County Sheriff James Sigman said his department was ready to respond to plenty of flood-related calls, but such a scenario never materialized.
“I expected it, but we didn’t have any,” Sigman said. “We dodged a bullet.”
-At Boiling Springs Resort on the Big Piney River west of Licking, water lapped against the porch of the store during the height of last Tuesday’s flooding.
Resort owners Wayne and Judy Bowker suspended operations late last week until further notice.
“We cleared out all the RVs and packed up everything in the store that might have been damaged if it was left there,” Judy said. “There’s just nowhere for all this water to go. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”
The Bowkers have seen plenty of high water in their time, but Wayne said this episode was different. “Rain just falling hard over, and over and over, night after night,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
When it comes to being weary of all the water, some of the local wildlife is apparently in the same boat, so to speak.
“I saw a great big beaver just come up out of the river and walk away,” Wayne Bowker said. “He must have been tired of it, too.”
-In Licking, two businesses – Town and Country Bank and Country Cupboard – and two houses were reportedly flooded.
-Houston State Farm agent Justin Shelby said last Friday that his phone has not been ringing as much as he thought it might with regard to flooding issues.
“We’ve had a lot of calls about lightning hits,” Shelby said, “but flood water is not covered under a homeowner’s policy, and I think most people are aware of that.”
-Texas County Associate Commissioner John Casey owns land bordered by the Big Piney River.
“The water was back up over my gates again, and I had moved them a while back so they wouldn’t get in the water,” Casey said. “This is also the worst damage I’ve had happen to my own driveway. And there’s a lot going on around us. I think it was in Miller County where someone had 100 cows wash away.”
Casey and his fellow commissioners have plenty of water problems to consider. Road and bridge repairs had yet to start after two recent bouts of heavy rain that left damage. Just before last week’s flooding FEMA had visited to review needs.
– And in most neighborhoods, there was another problem: Tall grass that was popping up faster than homeowners could cut it. After a week of rain and sunshine finally on Tuesday, the mission was clear for most: It’s time to get a grasp on the grass.
-Houston City Administrator Larry Sutton said the levels at the water treatment plant were high, but surprisingly not as high as during the round of heavy rain the area received near the end of May.
“It got high, but not that high,” Sutton said. “In the spring, the water was the highest I’ve seen it since the big flood of 1983.
“This is the screwiest weather we’ve had in a long time – there’s nothing typical about any of it. It just fluctuated depending on where you were at and where it hit.”