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Heavy High Country rain leads to some flooding in low-lying areas

The National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va., says a storm that moved into the High Country over the weekend dropped 4 inches of rain in some places.

And the precipitation is not yet over.

The ongoing storm brought the most rainfall to Boone since Helene roared through in late September.

Damage so far has been minimal, mostly limited to flooding on low-lying roads and bridges. That's according to Will Holt, director of Watauga County Emergency Services. 

He says some areas flooded that would not have before Helene.

“Not all of the stormwater infrastructure is repaired," he says. "So something as simple as a culvert that used to run under a driveway that's no longer there, or under a road, and now that water has to go somewhere else. So when you compound that problem over dozens or hundreds of culverts, and bridges and road issues all around, I think that that just changes how the water moves.”

Holt says although rain is in the forecast, it shouldn’t be as heavy as what arrived over the weekend. He’s hopeful the worst is over.

He says Watauga is recovering and remains open for business.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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