The white and burgundy RV had slid off the road, its front end winding up in the waters of Jordan Creek near a small bridge.
Farther up Jordan Creek Road, another bridge was washed out, said Zac Tanner, 16. The heavy rain came early Saturday. Tanner, who lives near the spot where his uncle's RV slid into the creek, said his mother got scared when she saw the family's yard flooding. She took his sisters and scrambled up the hill. Tanner started packing up the house and made plans to head for higher ground, as well.
The Tanner family's experience was typical of many folks along U.S. 119 from Mink Shoals to Queen Shoals. Heavy rain caused flash flooding, and trees fell on power lines and across roads. By late Saturday morning, many of the swollen creeks were receding. The Elk River, however, continued to rise, and the closer you got to Queen Shoals, the more noticeable was the damage.
At Queen Shoals, the Elk crested at 18.5 feet just before noon Saturday, nearly twice as high as it had been 24 hours before, and the highest its been since 2013, according to the National Weather Service.
Tanner and his cousin tossed a football - one they'd found in Jordan Creek - while his uncle, Maynard Tanner, and several other men prepared to pull the RV out of the water. The RV had sat all morning in water that covered its wheels.
The men theorized that water had gotten into the RV's drum brakes and rendered them useless. After the rain subsided, Maynard had moved the RV so he could clean up his property. He was hoping to park it on the side of the road, near the bridge, but when he tried to stop, the brakes failed and its nose slid into the creek.
"I was trying to move it, but not that far," Maynard Tanner said with a smile, adding that there was 16 inches of water in his garage.
Michael Charnick, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Northern Kanawha County was one of the areas "that got hit the hardest, as far as rain totals." Central Clay County had 3 inches of rain in 24 hours, he added.
Farther east along the highway, at the corner of U.S. 119 and Kelly Hill Road, Calvin Hunt gripped a hoe with swollen knuckles and cleaned mud out of the culvert near his house. He'd awakened his grandson at about 2:30 a.m., when a downpour caused the neighboring creek to breach its banks. They worked quickly to move some cars out of the water's path. One, though, they didn't get to. There was still water in the floorboards around 11 a.m.
Flooding creeks and erosion seemed to be the biggest sources of damage along the highway. Closer to Clendenin, the Elk River continued to rise, starting to spill into people's backyards. At a few spots along the road, trees were down, including some that rested on power lines.
More than 10,000 homes in Western and Southern West Virginia were without power Saturday afternoon, including about 5,000 in Kanawha County. Appalachian Power was reporting outages in 13 counties, ranging from Mercer County, in the south, to as far north as Nicholas County and west to Wayne County. By Saturday evening, the number of outages was down to about 3,000.
Bobbi K. Roush said her 95-year-old mother, Thelma Rule-Bowen, had been worried earlier in the week about losing power. Her mother's lights had been flickering Thursday, and the elderly woman had called to tell her daughter that she was afraid to go to bed. Early Saturday morning, some trees had fallen down the hill across the road from Rule-Bowen's house in Queen Shoals. She was awakened at about 7 a.m. by the sound of machinery as state workers removed the trees from U.S. 119.
Some of those trees had cleared the road and ended up in Rule-Bowen's yard. It could've been worse, though, Roush said as she pointed to a single tall tree that had stood on the bank. Around it was debris from other trees that had fallen. Somehow, the long, branchless tree had managed to stand. If it hadn't, Roush said, it could've hit the house.
Between Queen Shoals and Clendenin, debris and trash collected in the Elk around trees that used to be on the riverbank. Water spilled down rock faces onto U.S. 119 and formed pools. At one point, next to a flooded boat dock, a pontoon boat sat cockeyed in the water, it's nose submerged in the Elk's muddy water.
Close to 1 p.m., several men worked to clear mud from a back street in Clendenin. Like many residents along the river, some of them had been up since the predawn hours - and their work wasn't finished.
"The river's not going down," said Mike Stout, a Clendenin town councilman. "It's still rising; it's very swift."
Stout, who's in his 33rd year on the council, said he's seen worse flooding, but he added that no area of the town was spared from damage. One of the nearby workers said the rain gauge at his house read 4 inches. Town Councilman John Shelter Jr. - Clendenin's floodplain manager for the Federal Emergency Management Agency - said he'd contacted FEMA and assumed that the town would get some disaster relief. Most of the damage, he said, had been to the town's roads - personal property hadn't been as affected.
Heavy rain affected other parts of the Mountain State, as well. A rain gauge at the Summersville Dam in Nicholas County reported 2.47 inches of rain in the 24-hour period ending at 7 a.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service said. Flash flooding, the weather service's Charnick said, was "concentrated where the heavy rain was, which was all over the place."
Aside from Kanawha and Clay counties, Southern Roane and Nicolas counties were hit hard. Those four counties, Charnick said, were "the big winners, or losers, if you want to put it that way."
A Nicholas County dispatcher said Saturday afternoon they had scattered reports of high water, but no property damage. A Roane County dispatcher said water had receded since late Friday night and that there was no flooding by Saturday afternoon.
Flash-flood warnings, which the weather service issued throughout Friday and into the next morning, expired at 5:30 a.m. Saturday.
While Saturday was mostly dry after the early rainfall, Charnick said another wet pattern should be moving in on Sunday and into Monday.
Staff writer David Gutman contributed to this report.
Reach Wade Livingston at wade.livingston@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5100 or follow @WadeGLivingston on Twitter.