Click on image for alarger version of this graphic.STAFF

Heavy rain brings possibility of floods in some areas

Web posted January 8, 1998

 Augusta weather

By Amy Joyner
Staff Writer

When a heavy rain blows through Augusta, emergency crews and homeowners living in the flood plain have learned simply to wait and see what happens.

That's exactly what they did Wednesday night when the area received fast-falling rain. The ground already was saturated by storms earlier in the week, making flooding a possibility.

Authorities issued a thunderstorm watch Wednesday evening as National Weather Service forecasters and local officials anticipated rain would drench the Augusta area.

As of Wednesday afternoon, only .66 inches of rain had fallen in Augusta this month. An additional inch or two was expected late Wednesday and early today.

``You could get some fairly heavy rainfall overnight,'' said Kay Robinson of the National Weather Service in West Columbia, S.C. ``It could be very hard (rain). The ground is saturated, so most everything else will probably run off.''

Firefighters from all 19 Augusta fire stations began monitoring rainfall at about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, said Pam Tucker, director of the Richmond County Emergency Management Agency. They were to report rainfall, in inch increments, to the fire department's dispatchers so they could alert homeowners of potential flooding.

By 4:15 p.m., none of the gauges, located throughout the county and in some flood-prone areas, had measured an inch of rain, Ms. Tucker said.

``But more important is how fast that (rain) comes,'' she said. ``Two or three inches in a couple hours would flood some areas.''

Since major flooding in Augusta in 1990, many improvements have been made to drainage systems and flood gates.

``We're not going to flood as easily as in the past,'' Ms. Tucker said. ``But any time you get a lot of rain in a short amount of time,'' any low-lying areas can flood.