THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140615
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WEEKSVILLE LENGTH: 64 lines
When Bob Luther III drove out to see how his greenhouses had weathered a stalled squall Wednesday night, he was met on the road by several hundred of his mums.
Just hours before, Luther and his employees had arranged the flowers, planted in ``bio-bowls'' made of recycled newspaper, in neat rows fronting Peartree Road about five miles south of Elizabeth City.
At 10 p.m., about 2,000 of the 9,000 plants were floating on the crest of floodwaters that had spilled over roadside ditches and washed across Luther's fields.
``I'd never seen the water as high as it was,'' said Luther, whose father started Luther Greenhouses in 1960. ``It never completely covered Peartree Road. But it was down to about one lane in the middle that was dry.''
Luther made the trip to his nursery about two hours after a curtain of dark clouds shook out more rain than many residents said they had ever seen in such a short period. The worst of the storm lasted just over an hour, and Elizabeth City hardly got any rain at all.
But it was a different story in neighboring Weeksville and Nixonton, where National Weather Service meteorologist Hugh Cobb said the storm ``just developed over the area and didn't move.''
Unofficial reports from residents ranged from 2 1/2 inches near the greenhouses to 5 inches recorded by farmer W.B. Bateman a couple of miles away.
Cobb, of the weather service's Wakefield, Va., office, said radar showed about 2.6 inches of rainfall in the area. But he acknowledged that there could have been pockets of higher precipitation.
``I really don't know how much rain we got,'' Luther said at his greenhouses Thursday as employees continued to clean up waterlogged displays. ``All my gauges overflowed.''
Bateman, who has been on the farm all his 66 years, said he had ``never had that much at one time like that.'' The farmer is afraid the wet and the sun will take their toll on his cabbages and potatoes this year.
``Don't look too good,'' he said. ``This heat's bad on 'em.''
Ditches straddling Meadstown Road near Bateman's farm were still filled up like narrow swimming pools at noon Thursday. Water had receded from the roads but remained between rows of soggy crops for several miles.
Few signs remained sat Luther Greenhouses that water had risen flower-pot-high in some buildings and poured over a dirt road winding through the property. Butsome puddles lingered, and the ground gave off the musty smell of drying earth.
``We're cleaning up perennials,'' said Rhonda Ranhorn, who was moving geraniums and creeping phlox. ``They're pretty heavy from the rain. Everything got doused real good.''
Luther's mums lay scattered across the property as though they had been dropped there. Because the plants floated in their bio-boxes, they didn't get soaked too badly, he said.
``I think the plants are gonna be OK,'' Luther said. ``It's just a lot of straightening up to do.''
Workers began gathering up the mums from the roadside Thursday morning. Luther estimated that it would take a half-dozen workers about four or five hours to rearrange the seafaring mums into orderly rows for sale.
Luther didn't stick around too long after assessing the damage on Wednesday night.
``I was out here last night wading through water,'' Luther said. ``And then it started to lightning, and I got the hell out of here.'' by CNB