Chuck Bach, manager of the Tennessee Valley Authority River Operations Center, talks about the heavy rainfall event throughout the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday from TVA’s offices in Knoxville. The River Operations Center is staffed 24/7, with additional staff brought in to help during heavy rain events.
As rain continues in the Tennessee Valley for the 10th straight day, local emergency officials aren’t the only ones watching South Chickamauga Creek with worried eyes.
In a small office on the 10th floor of a Knoxville office building, TVA weather and river flow experts are running continuous rainfall models and sending messages to open and close dam spillways — all to keep Mother Nature’s excess from causing a flood mess.
“We began looking at this [heavy rain possibility] a week and a half ago,” said Tom Barnett, manager of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s River Forecast Center.
The planning has paid off.
What was forecast less than a week ago as a 2-inch rain event for the Tennessee Valley had, by Wednesday, become 5 to 7 drenching inches for the region.