Overnight deluge prompts county flood watch

Larry Hobbs, The Brunswick News, Ga.
·2 min read

Sep. 10—A typical late-summer evening thunderstorm went off script Thursday, dropping a continuous deluge on the Golden Isles that kept pouring until well after sunup Friday.

The result was roughly 3 1/2 inches of rainfall in a 12-hour span, which prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flood watch for Glynn County. With another 2 to 4 inches of rain possible through the night Friday, the flood watch remained in effect through 5 a.m. Saturday.

"It was quite a good run of rain that came onshore," said Kip Bricker, a meteorologist with the NWS in Jacksonville. "We had a stationary boundary, which kind of wavily draped itself across Southeast Georgia."

With the grounds now thoroughly saturated as a result, there is a 60% chance of rain Saturday and a 70% chance Sunday, meaning an extended possibility of isolated flooding through the weekend, according to the weather service.

"We're expecting this pattern to remain each afternoon," Bricker said. "We've got that cold frontal boundary in place and it's really not moving that much right now. It's draped west to east across Brunswick and into the Atlantic."

Heavy rains began shortly after sundown Thursday in the Golden Isles, bringing 3/4 of an inch of rain by 1:30 a.m. Friday as measured at the NWS's weather station at the McKinnon St. Simons Island Airport. The deluge intensified, dropping another 2.68 inches of rain by midmorning Friday.

Despite the heavy rains, flooding has been nominal, said Glynn County Public Works Director Dave Austin.

Public works' island supervisor Robert Harrell and assistant Antwain Mack responded around 3:30 a.m. Friday to remove a large tree that had fallen across Sea Island Road during that storm, Austin said.

"We have some yard flooding, but no reports of houses or garages flooding," Austin said. "There were a couple of issues on the mainland, ditches and yards. But the drainage is holding up. This might be a good flushing for our system."

Anyone who experiences significant flooding is asked to call public works at 912-554-7746.