Schulter, Henryetta Deal With Flooding After Heavy Rain

Nearly a foot of rain fell in about six hours Monday morning in Okmulgee County.

The storms led to flooding and water rescues in the Okmulgee area. Rainwater swelled the creeks in Schulter and quickly flooded roads and saturated the land.

"I know by looking at this creek we got way too much,” Rancher Roger Smith said.

Smith said he owns about 600 acres of land. While this round of flooding looked bad, he said he remembers worse.

"That was 1985. It went - you couldn't see that bridge down there,” Smith said.

Down the road, Burgess Creek was flowing over a bridge at one point Monday.

“It got plum up over the railing. You couldn't even see the bridge no more,” Anthony Ryals said.

In Henryetta, part of Meacham Street is closed for now and will need some repairs.

Back in Schulter, Anthony Ryals and his son AJ were zipping around the backroads in their side-by-side.

"Riding around, showing him all the deep water,” Ryals said.

Ryals said he is a volunteer firefighter, and after working this morning, he used the high water to teach his son a life-saving lesson.

"I just try to make sure he knows not to go in stuff like that,” he said. “You know cause there are people way older than us that still just think they can drive through it. And you can't."

As for Smith, he is taking this June thunderstorm in stride.

"When it starts raining hard, I go to worrying. And today, I worried,” Smith said. “But you know it's just part of Mother Nature and you got to learn to deal with it. You got to take the good with the bad."

Smith thinks about 80 percent of his hay was ruined in the storm. He estimates that is worth about $5,000.