GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Heavy rainfall Monday afternoon in the region led to flash flooding and traffic backups for drivers looking to get home.
Street flooding and standing water was a problem in places like the east side and downtown Green Bay, along with the on-ramp from Velp Avenue on I-41.
Reports of vehicles getting caught in the high water and drivers becoming stranded were coming in as well.
“We had a couple of people that were stranded that came in to try to find spark plugs or spark plug wires to try to figure out what was causing their car to stall out,” said Scott Grenier, Manager at the Advance Auto Parts store at Lime Kiln Road and Main Street. “And then they pushed them across the street and had some wreckers take them away.”
Grenier says he’s only been at this location for 3 months, but long-time employees say when it rains that heavy the streets do tend to flood in front of the store.
“It is affecting business as far as, we’ve had a couple of customers that came in and said they didn’t even want to stop because they were afraid they weren’t going to be able to get back out of the parking lot,” said Grenier.
Grenier says drivers need to slow down, not speed up, when coming upon accumulating water.
Flooding was also bad in the Appleton, Grand Chute and Freedom areas.
The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department put out a statement Monday saying they called in extra staff members to work as the flooding continued.
Employees worked to identify flooded areas and barricade streets as soon as possible. Some roads reported having very deep water, making them impassable.
