Update: Modesto’s Morton Boulevard fully reopened

Update, 3:40 p.m. Wednesday: The flooding at the Morton Boulevard underpass at Dry Creek has subsided and the road reopened to traffic, the city reported.

The original story follows:

South Morton Boulevard off Yosemite Boulevard at the north end of Beard Brook Park was closed for much of Tuesday for guardrail replacement. A stretch of rail on the east side of the road where there’s a bend along the Dry Creek Bank was badly damaged by vehicle crashes.

An electronic sign carried the message that the road would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday. But by 3 p.m. Tuesday, workers had finished the job and were loading up their equipment. City employee Larry Cathcart, who was working on the rail replacement, said the road would be reopened by about 4 p.m.

The closure came on the heels of the North Morton Boulevard underpass at La Loma Avenue being gated off because of Dry Creek flooding.

“Looks like creek crested overnight,” the Stanislaus County Office of Emergency Services posted on Facebook just before 6 a.m. Tuesday.

By about 8 a.m., water had receded to all but a puddle, and by 3 p.m., only a thin layer of mud remained. But gates still closed the underpass, and city spokeswoman Amy Vickery said it will be a couple of days until it reopens.

Tuesday morning, StanEmergency posted video of the creek, reporting: “Dry Creek is starting to come down. Crested overnight and flows peaked at around 3,100 cubic feet per second. Now flowing at around 2,350 cfs and going down.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 8:51 AM with the headline "Update: Modesto’s Morton Boulevard fully reopened."