By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Howard Hoagland stood as a beacon of calm amid whipping wind and crashing waves at the Bath Harbour Motel &Marina on Thursday morning.
Hoagland, clad in a black hat and heavy rain gear, seemed somewhat inured to the remnants of a tropical-storm-turned-nor’easter that had been Hurricane Ida.
The former New Jersey waterman and current Bath resident was on the docks checking his 30-foot sailboat, the Selkie, as whitecaps battered the shore and made some boats bob like corks in an agitated bathtub.
“Good, good,” Hoagland said, when asked how the boats were faring. “I got it tied well.”
Hoagland seemed unconcerned by what was left of Ida, which, at the time, was flooding yards and roads and causing small-scale power outages in Beaufort County.
“It’s nothing spectacular,” he said of the storm. “Kind of a run-of-the-mill nor’easter.”
The Thursday incarnation of Ida caused headaches but no major disasters across the area, city and county officials reported.
Though the officials said there was a higher-than-average number of traffic accidents because of the rain, no lives were reported lost to the storm in Beaufort County.
Minor street flooding was common across Washington, a cursory tour showed at around 6:30 a.m. City crews were out early, raking leaves out of gutters to unclog storm drains.
A picnic shelter was surrounded by water near Backwater Jack’s Tiki Bar &Grill, and short waves were lapping over the bulkhead at Havens Gardens.
None of the city’s main thoroughfares appeared impassible.
It sounded as if the county made out just as well.
“We’ve been fortunate,” said John Pack, Beaufort County’s emergency-management coordinator. “We haven’t had any major power outages. We’ve had some minor ones.”
The National Weather Service was predicting a 2-foot rise at high tide in the already-high Pamlico River, Pack noted.
“That still will not be anything significant,” he said.
Washington’s Stewart Parkway suffered a little standing water as a result of tides and runoff Wednesday night, Pack added.
“That was built for that down there,” he said. “It was built for water to go across it.”
In Belhaven, Town Manager Guinn Leverett said he had already traveled to Washington and back before 10:15 a.m.
“It’s here in Belhaven perhaps twice or three times what it was in Washington,” Leverett said of the weather effects.
Water became obstacles to motorists, as flooding covered numerous streets to a depth of several inches to perhaps a foot Thursday afternoon.
On Main Street, two children rode their bikes through the flood, apparently happy to have a day off from school. (Beaufort County Schools were closed for the day.)
Some elevated houses became almost-islands, and a few front yards were submerged.
The high water, a combination of rain runoff and wind-driven tides, caused problems with the municipal sewer system, according to a town news release.
The release announced: “Due to an approximate 8-inch rainfall the Town of Belhaven has experienced sanitary sewer overflow from several manholes throughout the Town of Belhaven including: Pantego Street, Union Street, Old County Road and Riverview Street.
“This is highly diluted sanitary sewer, again due to the extreme amounts of rainfall.”
Leverett said Belhaven residents are used to high water.
“The good news is the water comes in, but the water goes right back out,” he said.
The water hadn’t made its way into homes or businesses, he said.
Back in Washington, Keith Hardt, city electric director, said there had been no power outages associated with the storm.
Outside the city, news of outages was relayed by Heidi Smith, spokeswoman for Tideland Electric Membership Corp.
At around 10:24 a.m., Smith said, 490 people lost current in the Pungo vicinity. The cause of the outage couldn’t immediately be determined. Power was restored to the area at 12:24 p.m., Smith said.
Otherwise, around 43 people lost power at one point in Hyde County, and a log truck skidding off a road led to another brief outage in Pantego, Smith related.
“Things look pretty good, and we feel good about it,” she said.
According to the National Weather Service’s Web site, the automated weather station at Washington’s Warren Field Airport recorded a peak wind gust of 37 mph at 2:24 a.m.
Sustained winds of 20 to 25 mph with gusts to 30 mph were not unusual in Beaufort County as the storm brushed by, Pack indicated.
Weather service data showed the county had received 6 to 7.5 inches of rain by Thursday morning, he said.
“You have to understand, it’s sometimes hard to measure rain when it’s moving sideways,” Pack pointed out.
In Hyde County, the local government closed its offices “due to severe weather including extreme tides and road flooding,” a news release announced.
The county’s Government Center was scheduled to reopen at 10 this morning.
“Beaufort County has come through this very well so far,” Pack said. “Knock on wood, because it isn’t over yet. That thing is still spinning off the coast out there, and I won’t be satisfied until I see it gone.”