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December 29, 2008 - 11:03am

Flooding & high winds whip through Batavia

posted by Steve Ognibene in batavia, city, snow, parks, flood, wind.

It started actually Saturday as temperatures were rising in the upper 30's climbing to low 50's overnight.  We had received about 2+ feet of snow just in the last week and now it was melting very rapidly.  Today's high was in the upper 50's and the tonawanda creek was above flood stage of 9 feet and peaked around 11.4 feet according to the weather channel this morning.  It's now at a little over 12 feet and hopefully cresting soon.  Also during this time we had very high winds which were approx 35-45mph most of the day.  This morning there were gusts passing through around 50+ mph for about an hour.  As the day went on the city crews were on scene along with tree and power companies to help battle the flooding and tree damage due to high winds.  On every street I saw tree limbs, debris and even uprooting in some areas that had left much damage through the city.

Here are some pictures to share of areas around the city:

A tree fell hitting a house on east avenue and pulled utility wires.

Tree was uprooted on Lincoln Ave. damaging houses and a red SUV due to the 50+ mph winds.

Many side streets had flooding on the south side.  Ganson Ave, Elmwood and pictured here is Jackson Avenue.


Kibbie park or should I say Kibbie lake?  The winds were very high in the afternoon during this time.

The tonawanda creek filled up rapidly due to the fast melting of snow.  Here is a picture showing the River Street bridge with a vehicle coming across.

Look familiar?  Corner of Walnut and Law streets had major flooding.  A trucker was able to pass through heading south on Rt 98.

Let's hope the worst is over and we can recover a bit before heading into the New Year.

Philip Anselmo
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Wow. That second photo is wild. That tree was yanked out of the ground from the base, roots and all.
Steve Ognibene
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It's kinda scary that it could have hit more of the house.
Gabor Deutsch
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Great set of pics. Thank You for sharing. The flooding is bad but the wind was the real scarey part.
Howard B. Owens
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Good post and great pics, Steve. Thanks for posting this.
Steve Ognibene
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Thanks for all the great comments.

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