Storm brings rain, damage

Oct. 25—Crews were out early Tuesday morning working to clear debris from an overnight storm.

Rogers County Emergency Management Director Scotty Stokes said some areas in Rogers County received 2 inches of rain while others received a half an inch over the past two days.

"It really depends on where you live in the county," he said. "It's just the way those storms move."

Rogers County Public Information Officer Diana Dickinson said District 1 and 3 had nearly a dozen trees down and some spotty power outages, while District 2 had very little rain, but some power outages that lasted for hours.

Stokes said trees and downed power lines have been the main reported damage.

Stokes said the rain was soaked up by the ground, not leaving much for runoff.

"The runoff is what fills the ponds, the creeks and the rivers and stuff back up," he said. "And ... farmers are really needing their ponds filled back up to for their livestock."

Commissioners are scheduled to revisit the countywide burn ban Monday; a ban that's been in place since Sept. 21.

Stokes said it's possible the ban will be lifted, but depends on several factors.

"It all depends on how things progress from here," he said. "You know, what the temperatures do, what the winds do, what the fire chiefs request — there's a lot of different factors that go in it that the commissioners look at before they make that decision."

Stokes said the weather conditions could change and create more problems.

"Now what happens is, say the wind starts blowing and humidity drops and it dries the vegetation out or the vegetation gets dried out — it'll burn like it would last week," he said. "The problem is, now that the ground is saturated, when the trucks go out and try to fight these fires, they get stuck. They have a tough time, getting access to the fire so it makes firefighting more difficult than it was before."