UPDATED WITH MORGAN CITY REACTION: Street flooding reported in east St. Mary

Staff Report
A storm system that stalled over the Atchafalaya on Tuesday morning dumped a reported 7-8 inches of rain on Morgan City and more than 6 inches of rain near Cypremort Point.
Street flooding was widespread across east St. Mary.
Multiple reports said 6.25 to 6.5 inches of rain fell in the Cypremort Point area, National Weather Service Meteorologist Seth Warthen said.
In Morgan City, lesser amounts fell in the morning, but rain continued to fall into the early evening. At Tuesday’s Morgan City Council meeting, Mayor Lee Dragna said the city’s main streets flooded, but homes were largely spared.
“Our guys pumped all day long, and they did very well considering we had seven inches of rain in a six hour period,” he said.
Flooding led to road closures in Berwick. Drivers were asked to be patient and not to drive through roads that were blocked — Golden Farms, Francis Street, Pharr Street and every street south of Golden Farms.
Sheriff Blaise Smith asked people to stay off the roads in Bayou Vista to avoid adding to the flooding threat to homes there. The Sheriff’s Office said Smith assigned extra deputies to the Tuesday afternoon shift.
The same system led the National Weather Service to issue tornado warnings Tuesday morning in Lafayette and areas to the north and west. No confirmed twisters developed, although wind damage was reported in Wash-ington in northern St. Landry Parish, Warthen said. It’s still unclear whether that damage was caused by a tornado or straight-line winds.
No tornado warnings were issued for St. Mary, but Warthen said a wind gust of 47 mph was recorded at 11:43 a.m. Tuesday at Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport near Patterson.
The Atchafalaya River at Morgan City rose from 4.98 feet at 6 a.m. Tuesday to 5.77 feet in 11 hours. At 6 feet, flooding begins between the Morgan City and Berwick flood walls.
During the Morgan City Council meeting, two Lakeside residents told the mayor and council about their flooding issues Tuesday as well as last week.
Gene Hillen of Lake Palourde Drive said he had about 2 inches of water in two rooms of his house during the thunderstorms March 17, while Tuesday, he had almost 2 feet of water in the back door of his house.
“My whole backyard around the pool, all the drains are shooting water out of them, so I know it’s not a drainage issue coming from my yard out,” Hillen said. “It’s coming backwards, because water’s bubbling up out all the drains.”
Hillen said he was pushing water into his pool to prevent it from entering other rooms of his house.
Dragna said the water intruding Hillen’s backyard was because the drainage district didn’t close the floodgate in Lakeside.
“That’s a drainage district issue,” Dragna said. “There’s a policy and procedure for that, and they didn’t follow it.”
The mayor said he has talked to drainage district President Hanko Hoffpauir, and the floodgate is supposed to be closed Wednesday by 10 a.m. He said the district is going to put an 18-inch pump into operation to help drain the water while the floodgate is closed. He said there shouldn’t be any issues by Wednesday afternoon.
Dottie Courville of Karen Drive told the mayor and council she has been fighting flooding in the back of her home and water intruding her home since 1981.
“Now it’s even worse,” Courville said. “It’s to the point of almost disaster. Some of the wood is getting rotten by my back door.”
She said she fought for three hours last week and three hours Tuesday with the issue.
Dragna offered to help the residents find a solution for both problems, which he said were drainage district issues.
More storms, possibly severe, are in the forecast for Wednesday and continuing into Thursday.
ance of another frontal boundary. Severe weather is not currently expected with this activity.”