PAYETTE, Idaho — Friday night's storms led to mudslides just east of Payette on Highway 52, and residents spent their Saturday cleaning around their properties.
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The storm turned the dirt to mud, and all that water carried it on the path of least resistance over the road. This led to several closures on Friday night.
But luckily, by Saturday morning, the Idaho Transportation Department cleared the road and reopened it.
Next to this stretch of highway are about 12 houses that were impacted by the mudslides. One neighbor invited us onto his property to check the damage. He showed us the ruts caused by the mudslide, how it carried the gravel on the driveway down the hill, and deposited it near his workshop.
This homeowner spent most of the day Saturday using a tractor to haul gravel back up his driveway while smoothing it out, which helped dry it out. Several neighbors in this area used heavy machinery to fix some of the damage caused by the mudslide.
WATCH: See how neighbors cleaned up after the storm
One neighbor from Fruitland shared his experience with the storm that included rain, high winds and lightning.
"Last night I was at my in-laws' house and saw a lot of lightning from the west," said neighbor Josiah Harmon. "It just seemed like another storm for me to be perfectly honest, a lot of lightning strikes that were pretty close."
Josiah Harmon had a bunch of family and friends visiting from out of town on Friday, as he recently got engaged. They braved the storm to come out to Fruitland for his fiancée's bridal shower.
"They all made it in," said Harmon. "I know one of my fiancées sisters had to circle around the Boise area in a plane because they were trying to land from the storm and everything."
The homeowner I talked with in Payette told me this has happened multiple times during the decades he has lived here, but he also said he would trade the hard work on Saturday for the precipitation because he's more worried about wildfires.
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