Flooding

It seems that the season of spring brings the most crazy weather in Tennessee.  While most of April was beautiful and sunny with the exception of the last weekend; May has come in like a lion.  Last Saturday(April 24), the rain and tornado warnings started.  Then we enjoyed a pretty pleasant week.  Then late Friday night(April 30), the storms began again.  This time, they didn't stop!  It rained and rained and rained and rained some more.  I think Clarksville and Nashville got a record-breaking 11-13 inches of rain in a matter of 2 days!!  That is nearly doubling the previous record.  The rain did not let up at all from late Friday night to Sunday evening.  It was steady and hard.

Last weekend (in the 2-inch rainstorm), one of our basement rooms started leaking, but Eric was able to take care of the water fairly quickly because the rain only lasted one day.  We called our builders to take care of it (we had the problem once before and they thought it was caused from something else), but they didn't make it over last week.  Needless to say, if we thought it was bad last time, it was much worse this time.  It doesn't start until the water reaches a certain level.  Saturday night before we went to bed, it had just started getting damp on one side of the room.  I woke up Sunday morning at 4am when the 3rd or 4th major thunderstorm of the night began and was very worried about our basement room, so I went down to check.  The carpet was completely soaked in most of the room.  Fortunately, it hadn't gotten in the corner where the computer was yet, so I woke Eric up to help me move everything out.   We spent the next 3 hours moving things out, sucking up water with the wet-vac, towel-drying, and setting up fans.  We got probably about 10+ gallons of water out of the carpet.  It was a good thing we took care of it even though the rain was still coming because it would have definitely spread into additional rooms if we hadn't.  We also found 2 other small leaks in our house.  They didn't really do much damage, but need repair.

About 7am, we went to lay down for a few minutes before getting up for 9am church and ended up falling asleep for a couple of hours.  Unfortunately, we were late to church but we made it in time for Primary which was good since I had sharing time.  Funny thing was, Alex woke up earlier but was very quiet not to wake us up.  He said he thought we weren't going to church today which is funny because we ALWAYS go to church.  Likely excuse! We almost didn't make it home from church because Rossview Road was flooded on our side of the freeway just before you get to our neighborhood.  We watched a truck and a jeep cherokee drive through it and figured we could do it too, and we made it! WHEW! I drove back to take pictures an hour later and a cop was there not allowing people through.

The road covered with water right next to our development...the cop is on the other side blocking the road from people coming through

What you can see to the left in the "lake" is the tops of trees that line a road going up the hill to a house.  This area doesn't usually have any water.  The arrow on the left marks the hill you continue up where the house is.  These people will not be able to get out of their house for quite some time until the water recedes.  There is probably 4-5 feet of water on top of the road to their house.

The area behind our house to the left where water drains...it was like a rushing river going out of the pipe and down.  I've never seen it this deep.

My hibiscus is drowning...see the standing water.  The chair was there to try and keep it from tipping over, but the tree is very bent over from the wind and storms.

Later on, I found out that other people had it MUCH worse than us. 

• The Cumberland River is the highest it has been in 20 years and flooding is happening all around. 
• The Red River is also flooding (both of which go through Clarksville).
• Nashville has it much worse than us with tons of flooding and downtown being threatened by a leaky river levee.There were 137 cars stuck on the interstate and it had to be shut down and many other cars halfway or completely covered with water in parking lots and on roads
• People in Tennessee and surrounding states have completely lost their homes and even died due to flooding
• There is a video on UTube of a house floating down the interstate in Nashville
• Businesses are experiencing flooding also
• And most of them don't have flood insurance because it is expensive and has to be purchased separately in TN

School is cancelled today due to the flooding.  The kids only had 3 weeks of school left but it looks like it will be one day more now.  I hope the flood waters recede soon. 

I feel fortunate to have the small problems that we do, even though they are annoying.  It's supposed to be sunny and in the 80's all week.  I'm thankful to see the sun today!