News 12 First @ Five, February 5, 2010

AUGUSTA --- Construction is at a halt and the streets are clear...and it's all because of rain, rain, and more rain.

"Usually we're swamped. We have a lot of times it's a little too crowded to get from front to back," said Robert Steudle, owner of Elduets Treasures of the World on Broad Street. Steudle says when the rain comes, it washes out customers coming in for business. "It usually slows us down, but what we found is it's just the most serious shoppers come out then."

But the rain doesn't put a damper on everyone's plans.

"If I had a choice between having a full lake or one that's down quite a bit, I'd go ahead and try it this way for a while," said David Quebedeaux.

Thurmond Lake ranger David Quebedeaux says this time last year, the lake level was only 316 feet. But thanks to all the rain, its almost at 329 feet, that's almost 13 more feet of water.

There's people that come out to the lake and they've been boating and they've gotten use to the levels being so low. Maybe there were some islands they could see and now, they're submerged," said Quebedeaux

But as more showers are expected to come, both men say they see the upside to all this rain.

"If you're going to throw around blame, we want credit for all this rain!" said Quebedeaux.

"We do need the rain, I'd just like it to come outside store hours," said Steudle.