CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Cleanup work continued on Saturday amid the aftermath of strong storms which passed through southern West Virginia on Friday evening. Some areas were hit with one to two inches of rain.
The strong storm pushed several smaller creeks out of their banks causing high water in low lying areas. There were scattered reports of minor damage from the flooding. Most of he problems were associated with basement flooding or yard and driveway damages.
Mudslides kept the Division of Highways busy as several roads were impacted in Kanawha, Lincoln, Fayette, Mercer, and Raleigh Counties. The most substantial slide happened on Cabin Creek Road in Kanawha County, blocking the road entirely. Division of Highways personnel were also busy working to reopen one lane of U.S. Route 60 in the Smithers community after a slide Friday evening partially closed the highway. Other secondary routes in the region were covered in water which had started to recede by mid-morning Saturday.
Appalachian Power had outages trimmed down to about 1,600 early Saturday morning, but suffered a setback with a major outage in Kanawha County. As of mid-morning Saturday the outages in the company’s West Virginia service territory was around 3,400.
Crews anticipate they’ll be able to make more progress in cleaning up the damage with milder weather in the forecast for the remainder of the Mother’s Day weekend.