Thursday storms soak Tri-City area

East St. Mary Parish may or may not get a brief chance to dry out after Thursday’s storm, which caused widespread street flooding. But the National Weather Service forecast says more heavy weather is almost certain to hit Sunday.
Only clouds are in the forecast until Saturday night, when there will be a 20 percent chance of rain.
By Sunday, the rain chances increase to 50 percent, then 80 percent with rain likely and storms possible, the forecast says.
But nothing in the forecast looks like a repeat of Thursday.
The gauge at Patterson’s Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport measured 6.38 inches of rain between 6:56 a.m. and 6:56 p.m.
The heaviest rain, nearly 3 inches, fell between about 11 a.m. and noon. Another 1.84 inches fell in the following hour.
Wind gusts of up to 26 mph were recorded Thursday afternoon.
The downpour sent area police officers scrambling to set up barricades on streets that suddenly became impassable.
Berwick officials received reports that eight homes in the Country Club Estates area had some water in them due to Thursday’s flooding, Mayor Duval Arthur said. Pumps had been running since 10 a.m. Thursday but struggled to keep up because of how much rain the area received so quickly, he said. Crews did a great job of working to combat the flooding, he said.
Patterson City Hall got some water in the front part of the building due to a roof leak, but officials were able to get the building dry before any mold was able to form, Mayor Rodney Grogan said. About five to 10 homes in Patterson got water in them. Grogan said he received calls asking the city to turn on pumps, but said Patterson uses gravity drains not pumps.
“As soon as the rain stopped the water started flowing out,” Grogan said.
Five vehicles in Patterson had to be towed as a result of flooding, along with one removed from a canal, Grogan said. No injuries were reported in those incidents. Essentially all of Patterson’s streets flooded, including Catherine Street, which Grogan had previously never seen happen.
Grogan got two or three calls of flooding south of the railroad tracks and in two homes behind the library.
As of Friday morning, Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said no flooding damage had been reported to City Hall due to Thursday’s heavy storms.
“Our system worked great,” Grizzaffi said.
All of St. Mary Parish had high water due to the heavy rain, Parish President David Hanagriff said. However, Hanagriff didn’t receive any reports of home flooding in the unincorporated areas of the parish. The majority of the flooding issues in the unincorporated areas of the parish occurred in Bayou Vista, Hanagriff said. Multiple roads flooded in Bayou Vista, and Southeast Boulevard was shut down due to large amount of water in a short time, Hanagriff said. There were also a few flooding issues in the Siracusa Subdivision area.
In Centerville, St. Mary Parish Superintendent Teresa Bagwell was interrupted twice during a half-hour interview. The first was a call to report that rain was coming into Franklin Junior High.
The second interruption was news that wind had blown down a tree limb near her car without damaging it.
Heavy rain was the rule across south Louisiana.
Acadiana Regional Airport in far northwestern Iberia Parish recorded more than 4 inches of rain. Media accounts report scattered power outages and two school buses blown off the road and into ditches. No injuries were reported.
The Advocate reported that lightning hit Southern University’s Museum of Arts on Thursday morning, starting a fire that the Baton Rouge Fire Department put out in half an hour.
MSA-West Academy in Plaquemine was also struck by lightning. No injuries were reported in either strike.