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Cindy has minimal impact on St. Mary Parish

Much of St. Mary Parish escaped Tropical Storm Cindy without the saturating downpours of rain initially predicted.

“We just kind of waited and watched, and ... it just never came. Thank goodness for that,” said Duval Arthur, parish emergency preparedness director.

Though the region did get periods of steady rainfall, it was much less than expected. Wind gusts didn’t get higher than 31 mph at Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport near Patterson.

“We were anticipating 3-foot storm surge, 3 to 5 inches of rain,” Arthur said.

St. Mary Parish had minimal damage and only tree branches that fell on power lines, but those lines were repaired quickly, he said.

Cypremort Point and Burns Point on St. Mary Parish’s coast did experience a fairly substantial amount of street flooding due to storm surge, Arthur said. But further inland, areas of the parish had few problems.

Areas further east of the storm were expected to get the most rain. Projections initially showed Houma could get up to 10 inches of rain from Cindy, he said.

“Anytime a storm is shown to be going in the direction that that one was going to go, it’s major concern for us, because of the angle, it would push a lot of water into our parish,” he said.

When officials first noticed the “very unorganized” system in the Caribbean off the Yucatan Peninsula, forecasters predicted it had the potential to develop into a storm, Arthur said.

In 2005, both hurricanes Ike and Rita brought tremendous amounts of rain due to their similar tracks as to the one initially projected for Tropical Storm Cindy.

The parish has many improvements to its levees since those hurricanes 12 years ago.

ST. MARY NOW

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