UPDATE: The Wilkes Journal Patriot has an excellent photo of the 421 collapse, clarifies that the woman rescused from flood waters on Hwy 18 was in fact next to the Boomer Fire Station, which is where my mom's road goes off of the highway (see capture from Google Maps below). They also noted that "a policy of cutting back release of water from the dam to a bare minimum flow of 140 cubic feet per second (CFS) was followed... at 7 AM... helping keep the Yadkin within its banks downstream..." This may have been why the Yadkin Gauge did not reach action stage, as it had during the 1983 floods. In fact it started falling from 9.33 feet around that time.

UPDATE: Part of U.S. 421 also collapsed, see photo here.

On the morning of April 10, 1983 in the foothills of North Carolina, I sloshed to the school bus in knee-deep water from one end of Mom's driveway to the other. The usually-inches-deep creek had come up several feet above its banks and spread out across her driveway and the road. Near the bus, our driveway was washed out and I hopped over the pieces of ground remaining the best I could, battling rushing water. Later that week, I found evidence that the creek might have been 6 or 8 feet above its normal level. It was the worst flooding I had seen.

FLOODING PICS 5/26/09 BY MY MOM:

This morning, I was clued into heavy flooding in the County again by a high school friend on Facebook. I took a look and found out that over 6 inches of rain fell in Wilkes County, North Carolina last night and my Mom reports that the flooding this morning was the worst since that day, with the driveway nearly washed out again and creeks up high (click on pics above). Other local Tweeps concur, calling this a 20 or 30 year flood. Incredibly, one of the reports said that a woman was rescued from floodwaters on Highway 18 in Boomer, which is exactly where Mom lives! Scary stuff.

The map above from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus below shows over 5 inches of rain to the north and east of Boomer, and the Doppler/Gauge estimate below puts totals over 6 inches (from the NWS Hourly Gauge-Adjusted Doppler Precip Site). Officially, the highest gauge recorded 3.35" at the reservoir (NWS) but all gauges in the county were located northwest of the heaviest rains (except my Mom's rain gauge, which she just dumped 5.6" out of (she's at the "X")).

Impressive pictures and videos are available from MyFox8 (including the video below) and WXII. I recognize a few of the places, especially the Pizza Hut which I had seen flooded several times before.

Needless to say, there were flood warnings for this event, below is a capture from AccuWeather.com MapSpace™ (formerly known as Enhanced Radar) this morning:

The Yadkin River did not reach action stage at 9 feet (it was 16.22 feet in 1983, the most recent time it was over flood stage)*. But local creeks were at daily highs.

*I wasn't sure of the date until I saw the Historical Crests for the Yadkin River. I also recall either before or after this date seeing severe flooding in Hartford, Connecticut, when we flew up to visit my aunt and uncle there, but historical crests for Hartford don't match so maybe I'm wrong on that. I would have sworn they were the same monster East Coast storm.

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