Although scattered showers and thunderstorms are forecast for Saturday night and Sunday, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Thompson said the Austin area should be able to dry out over the next few days.

Friday, June 02, 2000

Although scattered showers and thunderstorms are forecast for Saturday night and Sunday, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Thompson said the Austin area should be able to dry out over the next few days. Thompson said conditions should be dry today and most of Saturday, and again on Monday and Tuesday.

"Even the rain that’s forecast doesn’t look to be near the magnitude of what you got earlier this week," Thompson said.

June is typically the peak period for heavy rains and flash flooding, so Thompson said this week’s high waters are not unusual. What was unusual, he said, was the persistence of the weather system that generated all the severe weather

"It just lasted and lasted," Thompson said from his office in LaCrosse, Wis. "That’s the situation where you can get – and did get – some serious flooding.

In the city, the process of cleaning up begins today after a frantic Thursday.

City Engineer Jon Erichson estimated city crews had delivered about 3,000 sandbags and loose sand to businesses and neighborhoods around town. There were people sandbagging along First Street NE near the Hormel Foods Corp. corporate offices, in the Dobbins Crest neighborhood by the J.C. Hormel Nature Center, at the Eagles and the B&J Bar, and other scattered sites.

"Today we start to clean up," Erichson said. "There’s a lot of debris on the streets that were closed from the flooding yesterday, and sand and bags to be picked up."

He added that the high waters had forced the wastewater treatment plant to divert flows to the storm ponds, but that everything had worked as it should have. That includes the elevated manholes behind the Eagles Clubhouse, which remained above Thursday’s high water.