Ferocious Flooding

(CNN) -- Some of the worst flooding the mid-South has seen in decades is thought to be responsible for at least 11 deaths in Tennessee, the Nashville and state emergency management offices said Sunday.


Five of the deaths were in Davidson County, which encompasses Nashville, according to the Nashville mayor's Office of Emergency Management.

The rains have closed interstate highways, displaced thousands from their homes, prompted evacuations of hotels and nursing homes and turned city streets and parking lots into raging rivers.

Parts of the state have been drenched with up to 20 inches of rain, with more expected.

On Sunday night, multiple vehicles were trapped by water on Interstate 40 with water rising around them and with authorities working since the afternoon to get to the cars, according to the Office of Emergency Management.


"All of our major creeks and the Cumberland River are near flood level, if not at flood level," Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said at a press conference Sunday, referring to the waterway that bisects Nashville. "The ground is entirely saturated, and the rain continues to fall. There's nowhere for the water to go." In Nashville alone, more than 600 people were rescued from the water this weekend, Dean said.

The western two thirds of Tennessee has seen between 6 and 20 inches of rain since Saturday, with flooding spreading to Kentucky on Sunday.

Dean said Sunday that more rain has fallen in Nashville in the last 24 hours than has ever been recorded in the city.

I was watching a US TV Broadcast yesterday, and the announcer claimed that in her area, they had set a record for the most rain ever in May - and it was only the second of the month!

Add that to the ferocious rain/flooding in the New England area last month, as well as the flooding in North Dakota, and it's quite a spring... (And that's only the US!)

All this extreme weather, one event after another, just like the Climate Change models predicted - maybe those silly Scientists know something after all...
..
.