Sunday, March 23, 2008
Rivers recede in southern Ohio; northern areas hit with more snow.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Heavy snow fell across northern Ohio early Saturday to cap off a week that brought heavy rains, flooding and even a glimpse of spring across various regions of the state.
A day after flood victims in the southern part of the state worked to clean up the mess left by some of the heaviest rain in years, communities along Lake Erie prepared for an early spring snow.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning that would dump up to 7 inches of snow on the northwest corner of the state and a heavy snow warning with forecasts of up to 8 inches along Lake Erie from Toledo to Youngstown. Snow was expected to stop by midmorning.
The blast came two weeks after the Cleveland area saw a foot of snow.
In downtown Cleveland on Friday, piles of dirty snow lined the street where worshippers filed out of a Good Friday service at St. John Cathedral.
A white Easter was in the forecast.
“I’m tired of it, yes I am,” said Larry Wetzel, 59, of suburban Independence, who uses light therapy in the morning to deal with seasonal affective disorder.
“It’s pretty hard when the sun doesn’t come out for a week at a time,” he said.
Joe Seguin, 44, of Shaker Heights, said his only winter complaint was drivers who don’t slow down in the snow.
“Other than that, it’s just part of life,” Seguin said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”
In southwest Ohio on Friday, Dorothy Combs wielded a pressure washer to flush mud from the porch of her home in South Lebanon and a broom to push water across her basement floor to a sump pump.
“Water is still seeping into the basement because the ground is so saturated,” said Combs, 49.
She said a visit to the town near Cincinnati on Thursday evening by Gov. Ted Strickland was a nice touch but probably wouldn’t mean any financial help to replace the ruined appliances — furnace, central air, water heater and water softener — in her basement.
“We’re looking at $8,000 just to get those appliances taken care of,” she said.
She and her husband, Robert, have flood insurance on their home close to the Little Miami River, she said.
The couple had just decided a month ago to put the house up for sale.
“I do wish I had sold it before this happened,” Combs said.
High water caused headaches elsewhere. In eastern Ohio, road closures have started to hit business owners in the pocketbook.
Tom Rice, who owns Georgio’s Grille in Bolivar, said he expects he’ll lose about 25 percent of his 300 Easter Sunday reservations.
With interstate exits and roads throughout the county closed, Rice said his restaurant has “turned into a research center,” handling calls from diners seeking alternative routes to the restaurant.
“We’re trying to keep up with the road closures,” he said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to minimize the impact on our business.
“It really has far-reaching effects,” he said of the flooding. “Everybody is experiencing a bit of pain with this.”
Flooding from the same storm system that hit Ohio midweek has been blamed for at least 16 deaths across the Midwest — three in Ohio, including two people who were swept away after driving into high water.