Our 500 Year Flood


I've had several of you who knew I live in Tennessee write me out of concern due to the recent flooding here. First of all, I want to say thank you all so much for dropping me notes to inquire of our safety.

I hope that all of you that were in the area are safe and suffered very little damage.
I apologize for not getting back to you right away but we had no internet for most of the day yesterday and it took a while to even get through to our internet service provider {I'm sure they were inundated with calls.} My family and I are just fine and only parts of our home flooded ever so slightly. My studio and our garage - the two low lying spaces in our house - received about 1/4" or so of water both Saturday and again on Sunday {more on that below}. But *nothing* compared to what others experienced.

I don't know how much the non-local news reported on this disaster, but is certainly going down in the books as "historic". A "500 Year Flood" is what it has been called. Much of Tennessee was affected along with a couple of other states, and never has anyone seen such a phenomenon in these parts. Throughout the state {Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga - and small towns as well}, creeks that were normally a couple of inches deep and a few feet wide became 10+ feet deep and looked more like raging rivers. So any home especially that may have had a small ditch or anything of that nature near it was at risk. The waters even rose to the surfaces of bridges, flooding them or washing them out. The Cumberland River, which flows through the heart of Nashville, reached 12 feet above flood levels, flooding our beloved downtown area. I just don't think we as Tennesseans were prepared for such a disaster. There were 19 deaths that I know of.

This shot was taken by someone who lives in my hometown about 40 miles away. There is just something eerie about seeing things submerged like this.




Close to home, scenes like this were played out over and over again.




This is my friend's back yard here in my little town... Hubs took a similar photo on our street a few doors down with his cell phone, but I forgot to have him send it to me for this post. I noticed some of my neighbor's belongings had been moved out in their yard this morning with their doors open, trying to air out and clean up.


Just down the road a ways - this creek is usually just a few inches deep. Here it is level with the bridge.


The Opryland area...


Just exactly three months ago, the big blogging conference known as "Blissdom" was held here at the gorgeous Opryland Hotel. I didn't attend the conference, but did go to a pre-conference blogger meet and greet here where I got to meet and chat with Rhoda, Layla, The Nester, Kimba, AnNicole, Chris Ann & Kristen, Melissa, Becky, and many other beautiful bloggers. Now this year's Blissdom location looks like this right now. Restoration could take months. Ironically, those who were staying at the luxurious Opryland this last weekend had to be evacuated to a high school to sleep on cots. And, oh, do I feel sorry for those who had weddings scheduled here on Saturday!


Exterior of Opryland. I read that the flooding here was one story deep.


The famous Grand Ole Opry... *sigh*


This is an *interstate* running through Nashville - about 15 from where I live. The cars and trucks were bobbing up and down like apples.


You are seeing this correctly - that is a building floating down the interestate.
You can see a video of this here. I watched in horror as this unfolded on the news. Awful!


Here at home, as I mentioned, it was the low lying parts of our house that received water. This is the side of our house where some landscaping beds are and where the water crept into the studio. Next to the studio is the garage, and the water accumulated there as well.




Excuse the mess. When the water started pouring in, hubs and I had to make a mad dash to get all of our remodeling supplies such as drywall, trim, and boxes of hardwood flooring off the floor. What wasn't "perishable", we just tossed to the side.


A few of our backyard and the neighbor's backyard. We had a lot of water to the back east side of the house, too, but I wasn't about to step outside in the downpour to take a picture!


So here is the studio that we were working on when the rain hit. Hubs had just installed some baseboards, walked out of the room for five minutes, and when he returned, half the studio floor was covered in a quarter inch of water. And funnily enough, just the night before the flooding - about 12 hours before to be exact, I had started working on a project to freshen up our tile grout. Last night I was removing mud from the grout with a toothbrush, ha!


Another irony is that the studio is an important project right now as I am trying to reach a deadline for an article I'm writing involving the space. So this weekend we really needed to be knocking out projects in there. Instead, we were sopping up water on Saturday, washing and drying our towels late that night, and using them all over again on Sunday for the next wave of rain and water that came in. I ended up working in there anyway. The show must go on!

I hope that all of you that were in the area are safe and suffered very little damage. Hopefully we won't see anything like this again - even 500 years from now!