…And the Rains Came!

To date, this has been the 4^th wettest winter since records have been kept here in the Knoxville region.  The good news is that official snowfall has only measured 1.8 inches.  It’s been all about the rain!

We took some photos to record what was going on in our neighborhood.  I’d like to point out that the flooding was much worse in other parts of the Knoxville metropolitan area with water rescues and at least one death.

This view is from our front porch looking through the woods towards a neighbor’s house on next street over.  In the 9.5 years we’ve lived here, we’d never seen water flowing down the hill into the woods like this.  

The little creek continued down through the woods…

…and then it ran close to our property line on the side of the house.

From the side it flowed across the back of our yard…

…flowing along the normally dry area until…

…it formed a small pond!

This sink hole is fairly close to ‘our’ little pond near the property line of one of our neighbor’s homes behind our house.  The extreme rain made it much worse.

So then we decided to take a drive and see what we could see in the area while it was still raining.  Water was flowing across this road in our community.

These folks have a new water feature next to their home.

This new house now had a water feature.  I’m sure the owners didn’t anticipate it or want it!

These lots are available if you’d like to build a home.  Fill dirt wanted!

This flock of 30 or so turkeys didn’t mind the rain.  More available food to forage for…

West Fork Creek is normally a docile little creek that feeds into Tellico Lake (reservoir).  Not on this occasion!  The first view is looking upstream.  This time of the year you’d see a very small and shallow stream with lots of rocks.

The second photo is looking downstream where the creek empties into the lake.  This creek was now a large river!

We drove over to Loudon Tennessee and we spotted this playground area.  Much of it was underwater…but the playground equipment was high and dry…and in use.

If your boat dock wasn’t the floating type that slides up and down on posts driven into the lake bed, this was the result.  Some boats were actually damaged as the water forced them up into the roof over their dock.  The dock repair people will be busy for the foreseeable future!

This is a view of Tellico Lake’s Saddle Dam 1.  Most of the area shown is normally dry with a walking trail.  We’ve never seen this flooding before.

All of the boat launches we checked out were under water just like this one at TVA’s park near the head of Tellico Lake.

Tellico Village maintains a small but popular beach and a pavilion where many fair weather events are held.  No beach and a flooded pavilion after all the rain!

There were many reports of unmanned boats and Jet-Skis floating around on Tellico Lake.  They’d broken loose and floated away from homeowner’s docks.  The T-BART (Tellico Boat Owners Assistance Team) organization launched all of their boats in order to corral the loose watercraft.  Good job team!

  

On this nice sunny day after all the rain, our local deer were out enjoying the sunshine.  This pair of deer were near the bridge over West Fork Creek.

This photo of Bald River Falls roaring at full power was taken from our local Facebook/Nextdoor postings.  The continuing flow of water from the mountains and hills in East Tennessee is why the rivers and lakes will take a while to drain and return to normal levels.

On the Saturday when we took the rainy photos, the area received over 5 inches of rain.  That one day rain total was more than the average rainfall for the month of February!  For the month we officially recorded almost 13.5 inches of rain…an all-time record dating back to 1871, 148 years ago!

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave