"Dodged a bullet" was the operative phrase among flood watchers on Sunday, as a predicted deluge produced only isolated puddles of trouble.

But forecasters warned that Mother Nature still has plenty of ammunition.

The snow pack remains deep in the Laurel Highlands, western Maryland and parts of West Virginia, with the unmelted equivalent of up to 8 inches of rain, said Jeff Hawk, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.

"We still have to watch that [and] watch the precipitation," he said. "The ground is saturated."

"If we don't have additional rainfall on it, we should be OK," said National Weather Service meteorologist John Darnley. "We need to just continue to melt it out nice and slowly."

After a chance of scattered showers today, the forecast calls for clear, sunny weather through Saturday.

But a winter of weather surprises has underscored the difficulty of long-range forecasting. Any predictions beyond three days are fraught with uncertainty, Mr. Darnley acknowledged.

"We get caught up into these models. We're just inundated with model data. Sometimes we latch on to the wrong model," he said.

In the past, he said, "we never talked out loud about the seven-day forecast to the public."

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Region experiences minor flooding

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One of the difficulties faced by forecasters is that a small wobble in a storm track -- 25 miles -- can make huge differences in the type and amount of precipitation. The weekend storm tracked farther south than expected, sparing the region the rainfall that would have spawned more serious flooding.

Rainfall on Saturday was less than six-tenths of an inch, well below the 2 to 21/2 inches some forecasts had anticipated.

The corps' 16 flood control reservoirs did their job, swallowing enough runoff to reduce flooding at the Point in Pittsburgh by 7 feet, and along the Youghiogheny River by 21/2 to 31/2 feet, according to preliminary estimates quoted by Mr. Hawk.

Over the past few weeks the corps had released water to draw down the reservoirs and provide maximum capacity to catch floodwater. It will repeat that exercise as soon as it is safe.

Yough River Lake in Fayette and Somerset counties still had 90 percent of its flood storage capacity available on Sunday, but Conemaugh River Lake in Indiana County had less than half.

In Downtown Pittsburgh, the rivers crested at about 23 feet on Sunday, some 5 feet below the level forecast by the weather service on Friday. It was enough to flood the North Shore riverwalk, the Monongahela Wharf, which will stay closed for several days, and the 10th Street Bypass, which is expected to be open for morning rush hour.

Minor flooding was reported in towns along the Yough, including Sutersville and Connellsville, and along the Conemaugh River in Indiana and Westmoreland counties.

"I think we dodged a bullet," said Sutersville Councilman Jess Lester, standing on a bridge over the Yough. "In '96 my house was like an island. This year it just came to the top of the riverbank."

On Saturday, firefighters helped the elderly to move furniture from low-lying homes. Sunday they set up an emergency station at the fire hall to provide water and household supplies to those who needed them.

At around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Richard George, a 50-year resident of West Newton, said the river dropped about an inch in 20 minutes.

"This ain't bad. Probably a lot of basements got water. I think we were lucky."

On Collinsburg Road in West Newton, Tony Berarducci stood on the porch of his Youghiogheny Canoe Outfitters, watching debris float past his building, which was surrounded by water. The basement of the kayak and canoe rental shop was flooded, he said.

"There's not much you can do," he said. "Just move stuff out and hope for the best."

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