We have had a lot of rain of recent. Day after day after day, more rain. We had more rain yesterday, and were under the threat of a possible tornado, which thankfully did not develop for us, but folks in Miss. and Ala. got hit. Unfortunately at least 1 reported dead.

I have been too close to three tornadoes in my lifetime and I can speak of the terror of an F3 (at that time, with the revised Fujita scale it would have been an F4) on the ground, tearing shit up, only an eighth of a mile away. They speak of the roar of an angry freight train, that’s what I heard, but what you feel is the vibration permeating your body, and the winds pummeling your surroundings. We were lucky. Didn’t take me long to get sidetracked did it?

The big numbers I want to throw at you is a result of the rain. Not in inches, but the volume of water forecast to be released through the dam on the Tn. River near us. The forecast for 2/27/19 is 430,000 cfs (cubic feet per second.) That’s a pretty big number but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

There is roughly 7.5 gallons of water in a cubic foot. Which according to my trusty calculator equals the sum of 3,225,000 gallons of water, Per Second! Try to wrap your head around that for a moment.

Now I don’t know how Olympic swimming pools became a standard for water measurements, but an Olympic pool holds 660,253 gallons of water. Again using my trusty calculator, 3,225,000 gallons per second would be filling 4.9 ( I rounded up from 4.88,) which is almost 5 Olympic swimming pools, Per Second!

More big numbers incoming! With 60 seconds in a minute that would add up to 193,500,000 gallons per minute. Or roughly 300 Olympic pools per minute.

With 60 minutes in an hour, we get, 11,610,000,000 gallons of water per hour. Or 17,500 Olympic pools per hour.

With 24 hours in a day, we get 278,640,000,000 gallons per day. Or 422,020 Olympic pools per day.

Wow.

I use this website linked below a lot, even now that I’m officially retired from diving out there, just because I used this information so often, it is a part of my lifestyle now. It shows me water temps, and current flows for both the Tn. and Cumberland rivers, (or Ky. Lake and Lake Barkley respectively) both of which I worked extensively. This is my source 🙂

https://www.explorekentuckylake.com/weather.htm