Heavy rains brought some minor flooding to parts of Breathitt County last weekend. And while the official amount of rain recorded at the National Weather Service Office was pretty good at 1.66″, it was nothing compared to the three-and-a-half-inch amounts that Floyd and Pike Counties received to our east.

Still, there was some cause for alarm for those who lived in areas close to where flash flooding occurs, like along Troublesome Creek at Clayhole. At the Post Office inside the Clayhole Grocery, the high water was the talk of conversation for some folks Monday morning, especially the day before. “The water was at its worst Sunday morning, and a lot of people couldn’t get home, or get out to go to town, or to work,” said Tammy Back, who works at the grocery. “The water’s gone down this morning, but if you drive up Route 476, you can see where the flooding occured.”

Along that stretch of blacktop, one could see where the water had gone up to, leaving a film of debris and garbage where the creek had crested before flowing back into its banks. Other reports of flooding and roads being closed were reported at Hardshell, South Fork, and on the Wolverine Road. While the water had gone down at South Fork on Monday, the Wolverine Road just north of Highway 30 remained underwater as of Noon. As a result of the minor flooding of some areas, the National Weather Service extended a Flood Warning for Breathitt County until 8:45 p.m. Monday night.

On Sunday, the Breathitt County Road Department sent crews sent crews to a couple of roads that were having damage from the water, such as Rock Lick Road. “There was some problems up there Sunday, and we sent a crew to work on fixing it up,” said County Judge-Executive Harvey J. Richardson at the Courthouse on Monday. “We were lucky, though. Aside from the usual places that tend to flood first, thre were no major problems and no reports of injuries. Our emergency management personnel stayed on top of the situation, and did a fine job.”

“We spent much of the day in contact with the regional coordinator in Hazard, and watching the areas that usually flood first, like South Fork, along Route 476 and Wolverine,” added County Emergency Service Director Chris Friley. “During the day Sunday we watched the river rise, then watched it crest this morning. Aside from the road problems at Rock Lick, nothing major was reported.”

As the smaller streams emptied into the North Fork of the Kentucky River, the bigger stream became twice its size as it rambled along northward, from Lost Creek to Haddix, from Quicksand to Jackson, and onward to Vancleve. The North Fork crested Monday morning in Jackson after Midnight at 22.92 feet - just a little over six feet below the Flood Stage of 29 feet. By 11:45 a.m. Monday, the river had gone down to 21.63 feet.

The same storm system that brought the heavy rains to Breathitt County over the weekend did destructive damage to the Big Sandy area of Eastern Kentucky and parts of West Virginia, before riding up the East Coast with major flooding and snows in that region. One observer thought this storm reminded him of another “Nor’easter” a few years back - one that brought paralyzing results for our neck of the woods when a massive snowstorm hit Breathitt County in March of 1993. “Considering Pike County, Floyd County and some counties in West Virginia got over three-and-a-half, over four inches of rain, we made out pretty well,” said Chuck Greif, who’s a Meteorologist with the Weather Service at Jackson’s Julian Carroll Airport. “If you saw what happened on the Eastern Seaboard, up in New York and New Jersey, we were very lucky. As that storm came our way, it tapped some moisture and some dynamics east of Breathitt County. That’s why Pikeville and Prestonsburg got slammed instead of us.”

Still, the amount of rain caught a few people off guard, Back said inside the store where she works, while next to her, a worker in the Post Office talked about the past weekend’s weather. “It was wet and over the road all up through here yesterday, but still most people didn’t expect it to rain as much as it did. I know I didn’t expect this much rain to fall in so short of a time.”