When It Rains, It Pours!

What a January… If this amount of precipitation had fallen on us in Chicago, we could have measured the snowfall by the number of feet!  Fortunately, here in East Tennessee, the weather is usually warm enough to ensure that we have rain and not that other crummy white stuff!

However, it still gets messy when 8” of rain falls in only a week!  Our normal rainfall for the entire month of January is 4.67” and we had 9.36” in just the first 17 days!  

 

This is a view of the Tellico Village pavilion, beach and parking area on Tellico Lake…all underwater!

 

This photo of one of the marina docks/walkways on Tellico Lake and is meant to demonstrate a bigger problem.  Many private docks on Tellico and Ft. Loudoun Lakes were underwater and many floating docks and resident’s boats couldn’t be easily accessed because the approach to their docks was flooded.  One or our friends who lives in Tellico Village told us that he’d put on his wading boots so he could safely reach his dock.

 

 

You can see where the normal ‘summer pond’ waterline is normally.  The fact that the shoreline is flooded as much as it is startles when you consider the fact that the ‘winter pond’ was roughly 6’ below the summer pond’s shoreline.  These lakes with a combined shoreline of over 700 miles sure filled up fast after a week of heavy rain!  The ducks and geese love the fresh feeding areas though...

 

 

This is Harrison Creek which feeds into the south side of Tellico Lake.  In the winter, it’s normally no more than 20% of the size shown above… In the summer, it has about 75% of the water volume shown.

 

 

Here’s another shoreline photo of Tellico Lake.  You can see the shoreline vs. the flooded area.  The barrier to the right is the overflow spillway and it shelters a flood plain that would be used for really big flooding emergencies.

 

 

This is the Fort Loudoun Dam on the Tennessee River.  It holds back the waters of both Fort Loudoun and Tellico Lakes.  Note that all 14 spillways are wide open dumping water at the same time!  This doesn’t happen often… Because of the water levels and all of the turbulence below the dam, the lock was closed and all commercial shipping was shut down…

 

 

I realize that this photo is blurry.  We definitely need an improved pocket or purse-size camera that takes better photos with the zoom function.

In any case, this picture is proof that something profited from the heavy rains and flooding.  The blurry white dots are seagulls swarming over the turbulent waters below the dams as the white water churns up lots of fish that have been washed over the spillways.

Oh well, we’re now back to sunshine with temperatures in the low to mid-50’s.  Such is winter in East Tennessee!

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge it!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave