Opry Mills, Le Deluge

Just what we need to jolt FFB back to life: another post on the weather.

As you may or may not have heard, it was a fun weekend here in Middle Tennessee. We got our "Hundred Year Flood" during roughly forty hours of relentless downpour from Saturday morning through Sunday night. Nashville got 13 1/2 inches, setting a two day record and coming within half an inch of setting the all-time record for the entire month of May within just its first two days. That's the official (airport) reading. Parts of Nash-Vegas got 18 inches, and the Cumberland River through downtown was more than 50 feet above flood level, leading to a flood of much of the lower lying downtown area this morning as the river continued to rise while the sun finally shone. The city as a whole looks like a land of a thousand lakes, although parts were more like raging rivers. All major interstates (I-24, I-40, I-65) were under water and closed down somewhere in the metro area. Hardest hit areas: west Nashville & Bellevue, downtown, and the southeast burbs, notably La Vergne, halfway twixt the city and the Boro, where they had to do house by house water rescues. Us, we got lucky: only about 10 inches. Our new basement flooded a little, but nothing the 12 gallon wet/dry Shop Vac couldn't handle (with many rounds of fill and empty).

In other ways, not so lucky. To those of us in the McD-centered universe, the deluge was nature signaling the weekend's (actually, this morning as the sun came out) other milestone: the passing of my Uncle J--athlete, scholar, High Chief of the Boro-based clan, and FFB reader--after a several month battle with cancer. His "final" words, as he wanted them remembered, "What now!?" Amen. Hope the beer and bourbon are even better on the other side.