Roads take biggest hit in last week's flooding
After a wetter-than-normal May that saw Jackson County lifted out of an ongoing drought situation, the county received more rain in recent days that has caused flooding of area roads and properties, as well as the declaration on Friday of a local disaster emergency by the Jackson County Commission.
Rain received on Wednesday and Thursday contributed to the closing of not only two roads that had not seen floodwaters crossing over them in recent years — Old U.S. Highway 75 just north of the Holton city limits and Kansas Highway 116 at the Jackson/Atchison county line — but nearly three dozen other roads and intersections in the county, according to Jackson County Sheriff Tim Morse.
In the past few days, Jackson County has received up to six inches of rain, leading to flooding and road closures, and many fields located near Elk and Soldier creeks and the Delaware River have also fallen victim to flooding, according to Jackson County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Pat Korte.
“We’re close to having Jackson County declared a disaster area,” Korte said Friday morning. “We’ve got a lot of collapsed tubes and road rock washed off the roads. It’s the usual when we’ve got flooding going on in Jackson County.”
On the bright side, the rain received during the past month has helped to pull a majority of Kansas out of a drought situation. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than three-quarters of the state was not experiencing any type of drought conditions this past week, while three months ago, just less than 90 percent of the state was experiencing some kind of drought. A year ago, more than 99 percent of the state was experiencing drought conditions.
The National Weather Service estimated that Jackson County’s average precipitation for May was five more inches than normal. Storm systems that moved through the county on Thursday night produced as much as five or six inches of rain in some parts of the county, NWS officials noted.
The rain sent Elk, Soldier and other creeks out of their banks in the county and on the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation, where it was reported that 13 sections of road on the reservation were closed on Friday, in addition to any bridges over Big Soldier Creek. Elsewhere in the county, Morse reported 21 sections of road were closed due to flooding.
One section that had not seen flooding in several years was Old 75 just north of the Holton city limits on Vermont Avenue. Elk Creek was nearly touching the bottom of the bridge on that road, it was reported, and many people were drawn to the site of the flooding.
K-116 east of Larkinburg, however, had already been affected by flooding, as it was closed at 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday and reopened 12 hours later, before Thursday’s rain fell. That section of K-116 near Delaware River was closed again at 1 a.m. on Friday, then reopened again over the weekend after the water receded.
