Cumberland River Flood

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The Cumberland and Cumberland River basin experienced a 36 hour rainfall that produced flooding in Nashville and its greater area (After Action Report, II). The 2010 two day storm was believed to be greater than a 100 year event. Storm activity began on May 1st and 2nd which created a large scale flash flood along the Cumberland and Lower Tennessee rivers, and within its tributaries. Historically the Cumberland River basin has received great amounts of precipitation and has experienced extreme rainfall before, making it prone to severe flooding (After Action Report, I). Some of the historic floods that have affected the Cumberland River are the December 1926, January 1927, January 1937 and March 1975 floods, which produced a maximum flood height in much of the river. Before the May 2010 flood, the Cumberland River reached a flood stage of 45.26 feet during the May 1987 flood which was a result of a series of flooding events that took place during an extensive amount of time (After Action Report, 4). The 2010 flood which affected much of Nashville acted more like a flash flood, which produced record breaking rainfall for much of the area. According to the Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF) on April 30th rainfall totaled 7.8 inches across central Tennessee. The report also states that there was a widespread of rainfall equaling to 2 to 6 inch in total, over southeastern US stretching to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Rainfall for parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky totaled 3 to 4 inches with a high of 4.65 inches (After Action Report, III). As it is stated by the report areas around Nashville received more than 13 inches of rain in a span of 36 hours, which doubled the record set by the September 1979 flood event. At th...

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... US stretching to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The flood had a property damage that exceeded $2 billion dollars and also a total of 37 people who died, despite the many warnings received. This epic event was considered as the 100 year flood that western and middle Tennessee had been expecting since the last widespread flood occurrence. The Cumberland River which is a major waterway that crosses through north-central Tennessee accumulated so much rain, that it resulted in a crest increase in Nashville at 51.86 feet, 12 feet above the flood stage. The heaviest rainfall occurred across Davison, Williamson, Dickson, Hickman, Benton, Perry and Humphrey’s counties, which translated into an average of 14 to 15 inches of rain, which are equivalent to 420 billion gallons of water in just two days. The 2010 Nashville epic flood event broke the record set for rainfall in 1979.

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