‘The highest I’ve ever seen the water.’ Swansea lake overflows, flooding yards and streets
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Flash flooding across southwest IL
Over 12 inches of rain fell overnight on July 26 in some areas of the St. Louis and southwest Illinois regions, with the National Weather Service in St. Louis reporting “life-threatening flash flooding” in some communities.
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Vincent Mudd stood in his driveway, looking south upon something he hadn’t seen in the seven years since he lived on Lake Lorraine Drive in Swansea.
A public works department truck was parked in front of his driveway, blocking off the road where water from Tuesday’s “unprecedented rainfall” had pooled in an expanse the width of a football field.
It had flowed through the spillway of Lake Lorainne and through his backyard in a still-rising torrent.
Mudd’s street was impassable and the water level in his yard had encroached within 100 feet from his house.
“I’ve been here about seven years and this is the highest I’ve ever seen the water,” he said near the stream gushing behind his home. “It’s usually about seven feet down, so the water has risen at least that high.
“It started about 2 o’clock last night and it woke me up. I came out and looked and it has continued to rise since then.”
Lake Yoch is the centerpiece of the residential neighborhood in north Swansea. Lake Lorainne Drive loops around it, connecting the two entrance to the similarly named subdivision off Old Collinsville Road.
On the north side of the loop, creek water inundated a narrow drainage culvert and spilled over the road into the lake.
On the south end, excess water gushed through and around the spillway gate and into the storm water ditch that continues south toward Centennial Park where it then breaks a hard turn to the west toward Richland Creek.
It was at that sharp turn where the water started to back up. It had risen past the tracks of a Caterpillar backhoe parked along the normal bank of the creek, near where it flows under Old Collinsville Road.
Centennial Park was flooded completely with water rising more than halfway up the signage on the Greenways bicycle trail that runs through it. A garden shed standing in the backyard of a home on Creekside Drive was submerged more than halfway.
Drivers on Old Collinsville Road slowed cautiously where water had pooled over the pavement. From both directions, they took turns using the southbound lane where the water wasn’t as deep. Less than an hour later, Swansea Police blocked off the road.
Three blocks upstream, Mudd and a neighbor stood in their back yards wondering how much worse it could have been.
The riprap rocks stacked below the Lake Yoch’s spillway, channeling the rushing water through their back yards, had been installed just last December, Mudd said.
“We had some erosion problems along here,” he said before pausing. “Listen. You can hear the rocks being knocked together by the water. Imagine if this wasn’t here when all this water came.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 1:47 PM.
