The Jackalicious Files

Near the end of last week I was sitting at the dinner table when the I heard the TV weatherman talking about rain storms moving into the South. I was indifferent to it for the most part until my wife made mention how she heard it might be kind of rough. All I could think about about were my gardens I had planted and so I rushed outside and finished planting some tomatoes before the rain was to come. The rain arrived the next day, slowly at first and then a heavy constant driving rain as if it was making up for lost time. It rained for over a day and into the next until the ground became over saturated and to the point that water just flowed over it - then the floods came. All throughout the low lying areas around my home the water began to flow like little creeks.

When the rain eventually stopped, the damage was quite obvious and over two dozen people had lost their lives from the floods with some areas accounting for almost two feet of rain. The local Duck river which was rising all during the rain storm continued to rise withe the water runoff and the Cumberland through Nashville was rising as at an even more phenomenal rate. Nashville was underwater for the first time that anyone had ever witnessed. Meteorologists were calling it the "500 Year Storm" and used phrases like "unprecedented" and in many instances "catastrophic". The rain came as they predicted but no one ever imagined how bad it was going to be.

One thing I'm proud of is the lack of looting and nobody was heard blaming the current President for the rain. Locals worked together to get through the dangers and rescued those in need of help... Tennessee truly is the Volunteer State.

I could post a lot of pictures here but Boston.com had a very good picture article. Click here to see the site.