Flooding in Truro, N.S., caused by wind and heavy rain

Water levels in Truro, N.S., were high after heavy rain.

Heavy rain and wind in Nova Scotia on Tuesday caused localized flooding on roads, farmland and recreation fields in Truro and Colchester County.

“It wasn’t anything that caught us by surprises in any way shape or form,” said Oliver Browning, director of public works for the Torn of Truro. “Typically, when we take a look at any forecasts, we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. But again, it was the areas that were expecting the problems.

“Any areas that did experience flooding, we prepared and responded quickly to close off those areas, so we were eliminating the safety risk to the public.”

Truro says just as the heavy rain was coming in, the tide also came in. These are signs they look for to determine if flooding will arise, and for this event they were prepared.

“Typically speaking, we see it handy to Salmon Road, so Park Street bridge handy to the railroad crossing, handy to Stella Jones is a typical area where the water will topple over Park Street. Again, what we refer to as the subway of Bible Hill, which is the underpass just past the bridge. This is the catch base there. Another area in Colchester County, handy to Highway 311, and in this particular event we saw east of Queen Street and water over top of that temporarily, so we closed that street,” says Browning.

There really isn’t much the town says it can do in terms of infrastructure to prevent flooding, so their approach is to protect the public and get the messages out of the problem areas to avoid as soon as possible.

“Essentially it’s just planning ahead and putting the mitigating measures in place of closing streets and notifying the public to avoid certain areas until the tide goes back out, the rain rescinds and things go back to normal,” says Browning.

“A lot of times, especially in this time of year, we start seeing flooding when the ice starts coming ahead of the river. In this particular case yesterday, the heavy rain started just as the tide started coming in. These are the kinds of things, the combinations that we are mindful that once we get A, B, C together, we expect some flooding conditions to deal with.”

The province closed Park Street Tuesday morning, which tends to flood during weather events. Town officials also asked the public to avoid other spots known as pooling locations.

Town officials say they were expecting these locations to flood as their infrastructure isn’t built to accommodate weather events like this.

The town says flooding isn’t necessarily common, but it’s also known to occur here.

Some farmers’ fields in the area appeared deep enough to swim in while some road ditches gave the illusion of small rivers.

As for next steps in Truro, it’s pretty much a waiting game, but the town says flooding like this should take hours to clear, not days.

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