Georgetown Parks & Rec spends Monday morning clearing flood debris from San Gabriel Park

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas - Georgetown Parks and Rec started off the work week clearing pedestrian crossings in San Gabriel park.  

“The North San Gabriel and South San Gabriel converge here in San Gabriel park. We’ve got the two crossings here in the park that we try to keep cleaned up. They’re here in the park, they’re part of our trail system,” said Parks Superintendent Jaime Beran.

Beran says those spots are heavily used so clearing them is a priority.

“I drove through the park about 6:00 last night and noticed that the water was out of the banks. The crossing at Blue Hole was underwater,” Beran said.

The city says data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows the flood stage at 9 feet for that part of the San Gabriel. It hit 11 feet on Sunday. 

Monday morning the river was back in its banks but the Blue Hole crossing was still underwater.  

Scott McFall was out dog-sitting and taking pictures of the nature the rain brought in.

“We’ve got a lot of water and it’s very, very pretty on the waterfalls bringing in some of the waterfowl. We saw a Blue Crane, White Crane,” McFall said.

McFall says he’s lived in Georgetown for 25 years and he’s seen flooding much worse.

“When a hurricane had parked nearby and we’ve gotten 16 to 17 inches of rain. Really, really bad,” McFall said.

“We’ve seen it much worse. We’ve seen both bridges...we’ve seen the pedestrian bridge washed away that we’ve had to repair before,” Beran said.

With the ground saturated, Beran says if Georgetown gets another major rain event soon, there could be some more problems. 

“Trail crossings are always susceptible to the rivers coming up and closing down but it’s going to take a good rain to do that again,” Beran said.

The rain did seem to be a drought-buster for the folks in Georgetown though. Williamson County says their burn ban was lifted Monday morning.