Noah, Get Your Ark

If you live here in Knoxville, you know we've had a lot of rain this year. In fact the numbers given on the news the other night of rainy days vs. non-rainy days average out to rain in Knoxville every other day all year so far! That's a lot of rain!

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had a day when we got a LOT of rain in a short amount of time. That usually means flooding. Now, I don't know if you've ever really noticed it, but our backyard has a large swell, which we affectionately refer to as "the ditch," that catches the floodwater in our backyard and directs it through the ditches in our neighbors' yards and into the creek that runs behind our fence. It's nothing for us to get some rain and have the ditch fill up with a foot or so of water. THIS day was different!

Here is our backyard when there is no rain:

I know, it's a pretty old picture, but you can see how the fence dips down to follow the dip in the yard.

Now, here is a picture from almost the same spot, after the big rainfall:

Notice how high the water comes up on our fence! It's over 3 ft! I measured it! That's taller then Jonathan!

And look at our poor neighbor's yard! She doesn't have a nifty ditch to hold all her water.

It looks like she has a houseboat! Luckily the floor level of her house is slightly higher than that outer corner, so her house didn't, and never has, flooded.

All that rain turned our leisurely flowing little creek into a rushing river. To give you a reference, here is a picture of the retaining wall we put in before the fence. Notice how much creek bank there is to the left of the retaining wall.

Then the rains came and it was good-bye creek bank! The water was probably less than an inch from topping the wall!

This is the worst I've ever seen it, and we've lived in this house for over 7 years. Jim says it was this bad once before, sometime during the babies' first fall. If it didn't directly involve the babies, I don't remember anything from that time. Jim remembers everything about everything! Either way, this kind of flooding doesn't happen often, thank goodness! But it certainly was impressive!