A flash flood in the Hamilton Place area caused water to enter into and eventually close the food court at the mall Wednesday afternoon, a spokeswoman said.
"It completely overwhelmed our system," said Taylor Bostwick, the mall's marketing director. "It got pretty deep in our parking lot. There was standing water in the food court."
She said the food court was to be closed the rest of Wednesday, but plans were to reopen it for Thursday as the mall called a company to help with cleanup. A few other stores near the food court also closed, Bostwick said.
The rest of the mall remained open, she said.
"I've never seen this before," Bostwick said. "Rain came in from any crack and cranny it could. It swept in debris from the curb."
Stacey Keating, director of public relations and corporate communications for mall owner CBL Properties, said she hadn't seen such flooding at Hamilton Place in her four years in Chattanooga.
in this 2014 staff file photo, shoppers take a break in the food court at Hamilton Place mall in Chattanooga."The storm system sat right on top of us," she said. "There was flooding in the parking lots. It was not pretty."
The flash flooding near the mall follows a severe rainstorm on Tuesday that peeled about a third of the copper off of the dome covering the passenger terminal at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.
The dome was damaged by what airport officials called "a micro-burst" that caused high winds. About a half dozen buckets inside the passenger terminal had to collect rainwater that had seeped in from the roof.
Blake Poole, the airport's vice president of air service and economic development, said he was sitting at Lovell Field's offices watching the storm when he noticed parts of the roof on the dome coming off.
"It was really raining hard. Then we started seeing debris," he said, adding that airport officials could tell it had come from the dome because of the shiny copper color.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.