The Simons Seven: A Tennessee Monsoon

Saturdays bring a lot of excitement around here. . . maybe too much excitement. Last week our neighborhood was hit with a microburst wind that caused quite a bit of damage and now downtown Clarksville and all of Nashville have been inundated. Never a dull moment around here.

The rain started Friday night and continued in torrents for hours and hours and hours. For almost 48 hours the rain pounded us. The lightening and thunder rocked the skies off and on for that entire time. The results were not pretty as you can see below.

Our neighborhood is up on the hill away from most all the creeks and rivers. I actually choose my houses and neighborhoods with flooding in mind. This is definitely some of the worst flooding we've encountered, but it is for sure not the first time we've been in flooded areas. In fact, I am beginning to think that we are the Rainmakers. Almost everywhere we have lived we have been there during record-breaking heavy rains--or something similar. In Monterey, CA there was terrible flooding and waves because of El Nino and the downtown flooded terribly and Carmel beach was all but washed away. (We were also there when Jon Denver crashed into the bay just a mile from my house.) In San Angelo, we were there for the hottest summer on record and people were dying left and right--that time there was no rain. The first time we lived in Savannah there was massive flooding of the Ogeechee (?) river and parking lots, malls, homes were inundated. In Virginia, it was the wettest fall they'd had in decades. In Alaska, it was the first time they had ever gotten rain in the middle of the winter and it turned all of the roads to ice. It looked like a zamboni had gone down every road and parking lot. In El Paso, the day we moved out it started dumping rain (which is never good in the desert) and about a half an hour after we left town a flash flood washed down the Rio Grand, killing several illegal aliens trying to cross and washed out parts of downtown and low lying areas. It was the most deadly and damaging flood in decades. When we moved to San Antonio they had been in such a severe drought that they were rationing water for lawns. Within months of moving in, the rains were torrential. We had days where a river ran through our yard and our basement flooded over and over. The worst flooding was in Austin and several people were washed away at swollen creeks. When I moved back to Utah, they had an incredibly rainy spring and our basement flooded several times. Now, this. . .

I feel like Forrest Gump who is unwittingly always on the periphery of some major historical event. For me, I feel like I am always on the periphery of some bizarre meteorological event. I asked Brian why we always seem to be involved in these weird climatic happenings and he said, "It's because we always live in 'diverse' places, and you know what the bible says about things happening in 'diverse' places." So, how do you not live in a 'diverse' place? If someone knows, tell me where that city is. But then again, if I move there, they will have unprecedented rains that floods major thoroughfares and seedy businesses. So, what do you think the weather is going to be like in Korea next year? I don't want to know.