A Wet Weekend

It's been a wet weekend here in Tennessee. On Saturday, my town got an estimated 12-15" of rain in about 12 hours. Obviously, no place is designed to handle that much rain that quickly. Then it repeated again today, causing widespread flooding throughout the entire Middle Tennessee area. Any kind of previous record for rainfall or rivers heights have been demolished.

I think about the only thing they've shown on national news is this video of a portable classroom cruising down the interstate. (Note this is I-24, a 4-lane national highway.)



That was yesterday, things got a lot worse today, as the water made it to the streams and rivers, which then overflowed their boundaries.






It's impossible to capture in a few pictures how widespread this is. Everything in about a 50 mile radius is flooded and shut down. They actually imposed a curfew where I live, so I'm not allowed to leave my house, not that I could probably get anywhere with most major roads closed. My city is one of the hardest hit, with the most rain, and a major waterway runs through the middle of the city.

Personally, I've been pretty lucky, as I live on relatively high ground on the outskirts of the city. Middle Tennessee is rather hilly, so it all depends exactly on where you live. Tons of water has passed through my yard, but it fortunately keeps flowing and not backing up. This ditch beside my house is normally empty. This is about as high as it ever got, and it has stayed rapidly flowing for about 36 hours.



It's nice that I work from home so I don't have to try to go to work tomorrow. Of course, if I worked local, I'm sure I'd get the day (or week) off. :)

It's finally stopped raining. The rivers will continue to rise for a few more hours as the water continues to drain. Then they should slowly recede and people can begin to see what's left. Thousands of homes have probably been destroyed. Probably tens of thousands of cars. Some interstates and roads may be closed for weeks until they are deemed safe or will have to be rebuilt. Likely, the final bill for this will be close to a billion.

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