flood

If you don't pay attention to National news headlines, or religiously watch the weather channel as I do, much of the mid-south is a wreck right now. The entire state of Tennessee had crazy rain, severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings for pretty much the entire weekend, Friday thru Sunday, three full days. And when I say crazy rain, I mean insane. Like some areas are up to an 18 inch total. And it all pretty much fell at once.

Nashville is flooded. Ten people have died in Tennessee due to the flooding and storms, four of those in Nashville. Almost every major interstate and freeways are shut down with motorists stranded in as much as six feet of water... rescues on the interstate made with large motorboats... a school portable building floating down the freeway next to semi's... shelters opened up and entire suburban towns evacuated and shut down. This all happened within a matter of hours -minutes even- on Saturday. The mayor of Nashville is ordering residents to stay in their home if they are safe; to not drive for any reason other than an absolute emergency. Downtown is flooding, The Children's Hospital and parts of Vanderbilt, entire neighborhoods in the metro area are underwater, or if they're not they're trapped in their neighborhood unable to traverse the roads around them.
It is crazy.

Ryan came home for the weekend.
His Cohort whom he lives with in Nashville, who normally travels with him back and forth to STL as well to see his family in the same situation as us, elected to stay in Nashville this weekend as they accepted an offer on their STL house this past week and need to find one to buy in the Nashville area asap. Um, suffice to say the Cohort is regretting that decision.
While he's high and dry in their fourth floor condo, the city is basically a disaster zone. National guard and Coast guard have been called in for assistance. The rain finally let up tonight and he finally made it (on foot) the half a dozen blocks to their lab on the Vanderbilt campus.

Ryan's staying home tonight. He'll see how things are looking tomorrow, but it's not likely it'll be very worthwhile for him to head down there, even if he can make the trip.
He and Cohort were supposed to come home on Wednesday night anyway this week as they have some sort of seminar or something they are to attend here in STL Thursday and Friday. So it's kind of up in the air on whether he should bother attempting to get back down there at all this week.

Not that I'm complaining about the possibilty of having Ryan home all week... I'm just really feeling for everyone down there. So many houses and cars and buisinesses filled with water. If you're curious and you have a chance, take a look at the weather channel (it's all over their headlines) or do a quick search for Nashville news and take in some of these sights for yourself. It is sombering. And I have to say it is surreal for us to see the news and look at pictures online and recognize roads and neighorhoods we were just in house hunting. Surreal. And I know that doesn't even compare with what people are going through who already call these areas their home.

And I'm actually feeling quite thankful one of those houses is does not yet belong to us.
Prayers to those down there this weekend!