Explored May 4 & May 8, 2010

Photos and videos below the article

It all started as a cold front stalled over middle Tennessee on the weekend of May 1, 2010.  The front dumped unprecedented rainfall as waves of moisture trained along the boundary.  Our immediate area received 4-5 inches of rain, which a bunch, but it didn't compare to the 15"+ some parts of Tennessee including the Nashville metro area witnessed.

Flooding was literally epic... never had middle Tennessee seen so much rain in so little time.  Parts of downtown Nashville and Clarksville, Tennessee were underwater.  Hundreds of businesses and homes were severely damaged by the rising Cumberland River.  And dozens of people lost their lives.  As of the time of this report, Nashville had estimated damages will exceed $1.5 billion.

All that water had to go somewhere.  And as the Cumberland River reached it's highest level since the Army Corps of Engineers installed a system of locks and dams on the river, it became quickly evident that our area would not be spared.

On Sunday, May 2nd, traffic on our site hit a record 5,194 visitors as folks were beginning to wonder how high Kentucky & Barkley lakes would go.  The lakes started rising fast throughout the day on Sunday, and actually rose four feet in 24 hours

 On Tuesday, May 4th, the lakes had reached 364' and were continuing to rise.  Forecasts were calling for a record-breaking 370' by the weekend, which was 11 feet above normal summer pool.

That day Kentucky Dam began spilling water pretty quickly and had spewed as much as 340,000 cubic feet of water per second.  That is equivalent of 2.5 million gallons of water every second, or a whopping 220 billion gallons of water a day.

The real story was Barkley Dam, however.  The dam began releasing 303,000 cubic feet of water per second, which was a record.  The result was the lower Cumberland River rising in some cases four inches per minute.  It peaked at 350.8' (another record), which is an astounding 3.2 feet below winter pool on the other side of the dam.  It was almost as if Lake Barkley had been extended north to the Ohio River.

On Wednesday, our website traffic had reached an astounding 9,788 unique visitors with 24,000 pageviews and 250,000 hits - all on one day - due to people looking for information regarding the lake conditions.  The traffic record had been broke four consecutive days.  We updated the site around the clock with projections, Coast Guard updates, and more.

Kentucky Lake, which is connected with Lake Barkley by a canal and for the most part maintains the same elevation, peaked at 369.03' on Friday, May 7th at 2:00 p.m.  That afternoon we broadcast a live video stream from Moors Resort discussing the flooding and the impact on fishing.

The flooding missed the high-water mark set in May 1984 of 369.99'.

The lakes held steady at 369' on Saturday and Sunday but began dropping rapidly.  It took just a week for the lakes to drop nine feet back down to near normal levels.

The US Coast Guard also took the unprecedented step of closing Kentucky & Barkley Lakes during the high water.  The "safety zone" was eventually dwindled down to the point where the lakes were fully open on Monday, May 10th.

Watch the Moors Resort Live Broadcast we did on May 7th (taped & archived)
See flooding from Grand Rivers, Kuttawa, Barkley and Kentucky Dams (filmed on Tuesday, May 4th)
Peak flooding video from Kenlake & Paris Landing state parks (filmed on Saturday, May 8th)

Photos from Tuesday, May 4th - lake elevation 364' (click for larger photo)

       Photos from Saturday, May 8th - lake elevation 368.8' (click for larger photo)