Area avoids the worst of forecast

Despite predictions that included the possibility of tornadoes and hail, Thursday's storms over Southeast Missouri were relatively gentle.

Still, enough rain fell for the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood watch for much of Southeast Missouri until 6 a.m. today.

Throughout the day, rain fell in cycles. The sky darkened, lightened and darkened again.

In Perry County, Thursday's rain caused low-lying roads to flood, but Sheriff Gary Schaaf said they would likely be clear by this morning.

"This is just typical summertime showers," said Dick Knaup, Cape Girardeau County's emergency management director. "We had a 13-inch rain, and now we have three-inch rains and people think the sky is falling. This is what Southeast Missourians have had to live with year after year after year."

The Castor River rose seven feet between 2 and 7 p.m., still 14 feet below where it was March 19.

Gwendolyn Kelley and Vicki Lingle of Jonesboro, Ill., drove to Cape Girardeau to straighten out a cell phone plan. But after stopping to use the restrooms at the Red Star public fishing access, the best friends sat in Kelley's small white pickup truck and smoked cigarettes, watching rain hit the Mississippi River, which lapped up onto the park's boat ramp.

Kelley, 40, said she's scared of storms, particularly tornado watches.

"I've spent a lot of time in my basement this year," she said.

The storm fascinated Lingle, who said she wished she was on the river in a speedboat.

At Cape Girardeau Regional Airport, a MoDOT public hearing on the Blomeyer roundabout was underway with a surprising number of visitors, according to MoDOT spokeswoman Tonya Wells, given the heavy rain. She said 45 people had signed in. Most regularly glanced out at the sky, visible through the lobby's glass wall.

MoDOT design engineer Anita Clark described herself as "very, very terrified of storms" and was not looking forward to driving through them to get to her Charleston, Mo., home.

MoDOT engineer Stan Johnson said crews had to put pumps in the median and ditches along Interstate 55 near Highway 80 in Mississippi County to move water overflowing from the St. John's Bayou back over the floodwall. He said that, generally speaking, state roads are closed once water covers the center line.

By 6 p.m., Cape Girardeau Regional Airport had reported just under an inch of rain.

By 8:20 p.m., Marble Hill fire battalion chief Kenny Simmons was feeling relieved. Simmons was filling in for fire chief Jim Bollinger, who was attending a fire instructor conference in Indianapolis. Simmons said less than three inches fell, putting "Crooked Creek to its banks and maybe a little over.

"But I don't think we got anything in buildings," he said. "I really think we're in the clear now."

National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Dodd said today would probably be a mostly cloudy, breezy day.

"Not the nicest day, but certainly not a bad day either," he said.

A tornado, confirmed by a Springfield, Mo., weather service storm team, touched down in Vanzant, Mo., about halfway between Springfield and West Plains. The tornado damaged a roof and two outbuildings, Dodd said.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127

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