4/29 -30/14 NORTHWEST FLORIDA MAJOR RAIN EVENT: The Hundred Year Flood

Hi everyone. I have had a rough start to my blog this week because of the major rain event that we experienced in Pensacola, Florida and the surrounding areas in Alabama and Florida. We had a whopping 20-26 inches of rain in one day! The other storms that I have written about in my blog were nothing compared to this storm. It has been called the hundred year flood. The rain, thunder, and lightening, started about 4:00 p.m. on April 29th, 2014 and did not quit until 6:00 a.m. April 30th, 2014. This is a map (courtesy of the WEAR TV Facebook page at, https://www.facebook.com/photo.phpfbid=618347331584041&set=a.449407505144692.1073741825.242242135861231&type=1&theater ) of the Mobile, Alabama/Pensacola, Florida area during the storm.

That white area is where the concentration of the worst rain storm totals resulted. You can only imagine what my gardens looked like. When I started this blog, it was to share my love of gardening in a new location, Pensacola, Florida. Previously I had lived in Florida, and was familiar with the intensity of storms and the rainfall. Little did I know that we would receive a rain event that dumped 26 inches of rain upon we unsuspecting gardeners.

My main garden fared well enough. The gutters held, and my collection bin was full to the brim! The heavy rains forced all the sand to come to the top of the soil. What I found from last year’s torrential rainfall was that you must get out there and trowel under the sand and mix it with the soil amendments that you added to your garden. If you don’t do this, the sand acts like concrete and the plants cannot breathe. The end result is that they become weak and die.

Just to show you the amount of rain and how hard it was coming down, here is a picture of my backyard about 6:00 p.m. on April 29th, 2014 (above). This is only 2 hours into the storm and we were starting to flood. The main issue was that we had just had about 10 inches of rain in the month of April already, so the addition rainfall was horrendous. Final rain totals for the month of April in Pensacola, Florida is 36 inches! The rains were so heavy that at one point at 9 p.m. our local news station announced that we had gotten 5 inches of rain in a 45 minute period!

The photos above, and to follow, show only a small portion of the damage that we received in Pensacola, Florida and the  surrounding areas.

Storm damage, 9 Mile Road, May 1st, 2014

Roadway washed away – 9 Mile Road at Beulah Road, Pensacola, Florida May 30th, 2014.

This rain event was worse than what Hurricane Ivan did to the area a few years back. This kind of rainfall is unprecedented without a hurricane. Interestingly, these same storms originated in the Midwest and swept through Arkansas producing tornadoes. By the time the storms reached us in Pensacola, Florida we were inundated with torrential rainfall. The storms then left our area and tore through the East Coast leaving a path of destruction there also. For more photos and information about this major rain event go to WEAR ABC 3 News, Pensacola’s Facebook page to see the damage totals, or visit WEAR ABC 3 News at http://www.weartv.com/.

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