The muddy debris from high waters over the weekend remain, but most closed roadways in Pittsburgh are reopening Monday morning.
PennDOT announced that the10th Street Bypass between Ft. Duquesne Boulevard and 10th Street Downtown has reopened to traffic.
The “bathtub” area of Interstate 376 was reopened to traffic Sunday night. It began to drain when the Monongahela River receded past the magic number of 25 feet, and crews spent Sunday pumping water out and cleaning the roadway.
National Weather Service meteorologist Lee Hendricks said that the Ohio River at the tip of Point State Park topped 27.7 feet Saturday morning.
The Monongahela Wharf is expected to be “unparkable” until Friday morning at least.
“It needs to be below 18 feet, and we’re not really expecting it to fall below 18 feet until Friday morning,” Mr. Hendricks said.
Point State Park and the river walks also began the drying process when the Ohio River leveled at 24.5 feet over the weekend.
Emergency dispatchers from throughout the region reported that Sunday was mostly quiet of weather-related issues.
Water continued to bedevil Wheeling Island in West Virginia, though. The local hotel/casino/racetrack was planning to remain closed through Monday, according to its website.
The last time the Ohio rose as high as Saturday’s peak level was when it hit 28.43 feet in January 2005.
However, while much of the area was drying out, hillsides that were oversaturated by rain and snowmelt from the past two weeks began to give way.
McArdle Roadway in Mount Washington was reopened, but crews needed to close a street above the same hillside after multiple landslides were triggered.
On Sunday evening, the city said it closed William Street, which is a narrow pass that connects Arlington Avenue on one end with Boggs Avenue at the top of the hill. It winds its way over the mouth of the Liberty Tunnel and at one point parallels McArdle.
In a news release, the city said the latest events were related to the slide that closed McArdle on Friday and which had just re-opened hours earlier.
No through traffic from Arlington to Boggs will be permitted while city engineers assess the damage. The city said it is allowing only residents onto the street.
The other landslide occurred in Spring Hill, forcing the closure of Gershon Street between Luella Street and Sunset Avenue.
The city is also assessing the extent of that damage.
Both locations will remain closed to through traffic until further notice, according to the city.
In the same release, the city said it was planning to reopen Noblestown Road in the West End — closed by a landslide this weekend — sometime Sunday evening.
Karen Kane: kkane@post-gazette.com or at 724-772-9180.
First Published: February 18, 2018, 6:12 p.m.
Updated: February 19, 2018, 2:00 p.m.
