Heavy rains here in the Smokies have brought stream levels up and brought some unstable slopes down. Yesterday Little River Road was closed for a little while because of a minor landslide. It mustn’t have been much since the road is open today.

This photo of Hwy 441 was on www.wbir.com

Highway 441 between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg experienced a major slide about a week ago and another one happened yesterday. Fortunately the highway is divided along this section of road, so it was relatively easy to set up a detour. Currently all traffic has been diverted to the northbound side, and there is one lane of traffic in either direction.

The largest landslide occurred over in Maggie Valley, NC on Rich Cove Road. This is a steep road with numerous switchbacks. The slide crossed the road several times and damaged a number of houses. Fortunately there were no injuries.

Fishing isn’t on the schedule today but we’re hoping for streams to fall out to a fishable level by Monday. All this extra water won’t make tailwater fishing an option either.