Polk close to flooding after weeklong rainfall
How will people in Polk County likely remember the past days, and probably the month of February? It’s been wet.
Mother Nature let loose the waterworks for several days over the whole region, prompting flood watches and seeing areas around Euharlee Creek and Cedar Creek become temporary swamps. Baseball fields were left empty at the high schools, tennis courts were drowned out for the whole week. No practice was possible on Biggers Field, which ended up completely underwater by week’s end.
As of last Friday when the paper was being wrapped up, at least 7 inches of rain had come down, and more was expected to add to the total for the week.
Unfortunately, there’s the potential for more rain on the way.
During last week’s rainfall, Cedartown’s Public Works department did report a sewer spill due to the large amount of rainfall. Somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 gallons of sewage escaped the system during localized flooding around Spruce Street, where one of the flood pumps stations became overwhelmed by the amount of water.
They did take some measures to clean up the area, but wet weather continued throughout the week and waters rose further. To the point where officials in Cedartown shut down a portion of Furnace Street that connects West Avenue with Wissahickon Avenue that became flooded by Big Spring.
City Manager Bill Fann said that flooding began after officials took the steps to close flood gates that control the flow of water into Cedar Creek from the spring, which supplies Cedartown with water.
In Rockmart, the floodwaters rose in Seaborn Jones Park as they usually do, but hadn’t completely inundated the area as of Friday morning last week.
Rainfall was expected to continue through most of the weekend at press time, and clear up as the week began.
However the forecast as it stood at press time was not good overall for Polk County to get rid of the excess water. Potential for additional rainfall to close out February starts today (Wednesday for the print subscribers who get the paper on Tuesday) with some slight chances for midweek showers to return. (At the time and fortunate for all the percentage of potential rain was 30 percent.)
The early week forecast did provide some hope of sunshine, and with temperatures more in the spring-like range. At one point during the month, the thermometer in the area was well above 70 degrees.
Check back on weekday mornings for updated forecasts for Polk County from the National Weather Service, and fingers crossed that everyone gets a chance to dry out.