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'One-in-100-year' rainfall leaves city with wet mess

That was one wet weekend. South Surrey and White Rock were deluged with rain, keeping city crews busy.

Rob Costanzo, Surrey's director of operations, said the area saw 91.6 millimeters over the weekend, with 86.2 mm on Sunday.

"It was a huge amount of rainfall," he said, noting the area usually sees 65 to 70 mm for the entire month of May.

Send PHOTOS > edit@thenownewspaper.com"It was a one-in-100-year event, the intensity of rain that hit," Costanzo said.

The area hit the worst in terms of infrastructure was 16th Avenue, which was closed between 168th and 172nd Streets Sunday evening.

"We were kept busy mainly in that one sector."

Costanzo said it was a perfect storm - a combination of heavy rain and high tide.

While there were reports of a mudslide, Costanzo said there was a significant amount of debris and gravel covering the roads.

The city's north end wasn't impacted much at all by the downpour, he noted.

"The chaos is over, it's just the clean up," Costanzo said Monday morning. "It's underway, we should be ready to rock soon," he added, expecting 16th Avenue would reopen in the late morning or early afternoon.

Greg St. Louis, White Rock's director of engineering and municipal operations, said 83 mm of rain fell on his city, flooding part of Marine Drive near the Semiahmoo First Nation Reserve.

He said extra equipment was brought in to pump the water into the Little Campbell River.

Despite this "major rain event," as St. Louis called it, the subsequent flooding still paled in comparison to the aftermath of a freak hail storm on June 8, 1999, which resulted in some White Rock merchants being put out of business.

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