L’Observateur / June 6, 2000

LAPLACE – Well, it finally happened. After two months of dusty, hot, dry,weather, the skies clouded up Sunday afternoon and dumped some much- needed rain on the parched River Parishes.

Rick Moran, director of the St. John Airport, said that between Sunday andMonday it rained a grand total of three-tenths of an inch, a long way off from this area’s usual rainy summer weather. But it was wet, cool and endeda severe drought that had a death grip on southern Louisiana.

The National Weather Service only had information from New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, where .57 inches were reported on Sundayand .37 inches on Monday.It might have seemed like a lot of water was dumped on St. John Parish, butMoran said the fields out by the airport were still dusty after the storm.

St. James reported a very mild rainstorm. Weather monitoring stationsrecorded 35 mph wind gusts with approximately half an inch of rain fall Tuesday. There was no damage reported from the storm.Because of the rain, St. John Parish President Nickie Monica declared thewater emergency in the parish over. Now, residents can go back to wateringtheir lawns, filling their swimming pools and washing their cars without fear of the “water police” telling them to turn the tap off.

“Things are looking a lot better,” said Monica.

However, the quick and sometimes severe rain storms did cause a little minor damage in the St. John Parish area.The wet roads caused an Abita Springs woman to go sliding across the south- bound lanes of Interstate 55 in her Chevrolet pickup truck. The back end ofthe truck ended up hanging over the railing of the interstate, 20 feet over the swamp.

Melissa Strickmyller, her husband and son were traveling to LaPlace when the rain storm caught them by surprise on Monday morning. As she was slowingdown to turn into the LaPlace/Baton Rouge exit, the truck started to skid.

“I must have hit the brakes a little too hard,” said Strickmyller, “because we started sliding all over the road.”The truck slid across the wet pavement of the interstate from the right lane to the left, did a 360-degree turn and ended up hanging over the highway railing.

Amazingly, nobody in the truck was injured, and the truck lost its right rear tire.

On Remy Drive in LaPlace, a tree in front of the home of Thom and Maria Scott exploded when it was struck by lightning Monday at 10:35 a.m.Showers of splintered wood rained upon neighbors’ lots and in the street, while large limbs damaged front porch rails of the Scott home. Neighbors oneither side, Rene Loving and Denise Stein, thought at first their own houses were struck, then saw the damage outside.

(Erik Sanzenbach, Leonard Gray and Daniel Tyler Gooden contributed to this story.)

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