While it didn’t cause anywhere near
the headaches as last year’s flood did,
Saturday night’s deluge left its mark
By Per Peterson
For the first two-plus weeks of August, the Tracy area received nothing more than a shot of rain here, a little bit there. That changed in a big way Saturday night.
Tracy was drenched with 3.35” of rain in less than two hours late Saturday, as a string of wicked weather rolled through southwest Minnesota. Tornadoes were being investigated to the west and southwest of town, and in Tracy, residents dealt with water in their basements and, yes, even some sewage issues.
“We had the by-pass pump going for an hour,” Tracy Public Works Director Shane Daniels said. “Most of the complaints that I had were from street flooding — Rowland and 4th and over by Central Park. I did talk to a lady on Rowland (Monday) and she asked when this was going to quit.”
Daniels didn’t have an answer, mainly because of the amount of rain that fell in such a short period of time. The same thing happened last July when torrential rains fell in a relatively short window of time.
“When you get that much rain in about two hours — some people were saying they got 4 1/2 inches,” Daniels said. “I don’t know if it varied in different parts of town, but (the League of Minnesota Cities) deemed it another 100-year rain.”
See this week’s Headlight-Herald for more on this article.