The rains that washed away lives and homes in Waverly, Tennessee, were not your grandfather’s rains. Noah’s maybe, but not your grandfather’s.
Nor are they freak accidents. It’s a grisly fact that while crews scour the banks of Waverly’s abundant creeks for people still missing after Saturday’s massive flood killed more than 20, these heavy, intense rains that are dumping on much of the Southeast are a new normal.
Climate scientists have warned for decades that global warming would cause more heavy rain. Now, with Earth almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it was in the late 1800s, scientists are observing the trend in real time, according to National Public Radio.
James Everett, manager of Tennessee Valley Authority’s River Forecast Center, said what happened in Waverly and the 300 square miles of watershed that drains its rural and gently rolling terrain where Middle Tennessee gives way to West Tennessee was an “extremely rare occurrence” and in an area where TVA flood control couldn’t have a made a difference. There are no dams nearby.
“It was extremely heavy, intense rainfall over a somewhat relatively small area … 17 inches of rainfall in a day and 15 of those inches occurred in about six hours. Even as somebody that has studied hydrology, it’s hard to quantify that kind of rainfall,” Everett said.