Weather to calm for the weekend
♦ Cooler temperatures could bring snow flurries toward daybreak, but it’s not expected to stick.
After a sudden deluge that caused flash flooding and some road closures in Rome and Floyd County, the possibility of snow flurries Friday morning being “the lesser of two evils” made Tim Herrington laugh out loud.
“What’s going to happen with the flurries is they’ll be pretty for awhile, but they won’t stick,” said Herrington, Floyd County Emergency Management Agency director.
The overnight temperature wasn’t expected to dip below 36 degrees.
“The melting will cause some water on the roads, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
Although Herrington expected all previously-closed roads to be drained and reopened by Friday, Gaines Loop Road, Little Texas Valley Road and Thomas Bluff
Road were still closed Thursday evening.
The good news is, the worst of this week’s weather is over, he said.
“We’ve all been getting alerts like crazy,” he said. “Flooding, tornadoes, thunderstorms, you name it. We ran the gamut. But everything’s calmed down now.”
Local schools escaped start-delays Thursday, but did cancel some after-school events.
Lenora Mcentire Doss, Floyd County Schools spokeswoman, said a community meeting on the modernization of Armuchee High School would be rescheduled to a later date. Both school systems are monitoring road closures for Friday.
According to the rain gauge at Richard B. Russell Regional Airport, the area experienced 3.83 inches of rain since Tuesday, with the majority of that falling on Thursday.
The Oostanaula River at Turner Mccall Bridge measured at 7.09 feet at 5:45 a.m. Thursday. By 3:45 p.m., it had risen to 17.72 feet. That represents a steady rise of about one foot per hour.
Official flood stage for the river is 25 feet.
Herrington said that although there will still be some run-off from the creeks and gutter systems moving into the rivers, he’s not anticipating an issue.
“There’s still a lot of space available in the rivers,” he said.
A Girl Scout camp near Lake Marvin, Camp Misty Mountain, was evacuated of
its small professional staff after water breached the dam. Rome-floyd firefighters were keeping an eye on the dam Thursday evening.
Herrington said someone was supposed to have opened a drain at the lake to relieve the water a few days before the downpour, but it didn’t get done for reasons he wasn’t sure of.
All in all, Herrington was feeling good about the way the storm was handled.
“I think we’ve done pretty well,” he said. “We did have some slight power outages and a few downed limbs, but it was a great concerted effort by all agencies.”