“Nashville broke its records Saturday and Sunday for wettest day, wettest 2-day period and wettest May overall, measuring nearly 14 inches of rain from the storm, the Weather Chanel reported. [Wettest May, on May 2!]

“Flooding was expected throughout the Tennessee and Ohio valleys, and heavy rains are set to hit Atlanta Monday.

“People in Tennessee Sunday dealt with flooding that has already claimed at least seven lives, officials said.

Tennessee Flooding

So this follows by several weeks the record flooding in Rhode Island and other parts of New England.  Georgia had record rain in December.  Something’s going on here, no?

Updates:

Video of flooding

From Weather Underground:

Nashville, Tennessee remains virtually paralyzed this morning thanks to that city’s heaviest recorded 1-day and 2-day rainfall in its history. A remarkable 7.25″ of rain fell on the city Sunday, breaking the record for most rain in a single day (previously 6.60″, set September 13, 1979.) Nashville’s third greatest day of rainfall on record occurred Saturday, when 6.32″ fell. Nashville also eclipsed its greatest 6-hour and 12-hour rainfall events on record, with 5.57″ and 7.20″, respectively, falling on Sunday. And, remarkably, only 2 days into the month, May 2010 is already the wettest May on record for Nashville.

Rainfall records were smashed all across Tennessee and Kentucky, with amounts as high as 17.73″ recorded at Camden, TN, and 17.02″ at Brownsville, TN. According to Chris Burt, the author of the excellent book Extreme Weather, the 13.30″ that fell on Camden in 24 hours just missed eclipsing the state’s all-time 24-hour precipitation record, the 13.60″ inches that fell on Milan on September 13, 1982. Jackson, Tennessee had its rainiest day in its 63-year weather history on Sunday, 7.93″. Bowling Green, Kentucky had its heaviest 2-day precipitation event on record, 9.67″. Records in Bowling Green go back to 1870. The University of Wisconsin GOES Satellite Blog has some excellent imagery showing the remarkable plume of tropical moisture that crossed over Central America from the Eastern Pacific and fed the record rains.

…Tennessee and most of the northern 2/3 of the U.S. can expect a much higher incidence of record flooding in coming decades. This will be driven by two factors: increased urban development causing faster run-off, and an increase in very heavy precipitation events due to global warming. Both factors have already contributed to significant increases in flooding events in recent decades over much of the U.S. According the landmark 2009 U.S. Climate Impact Report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “the amount of rain falling in the heaviest downpours has increased approximately 20 percent on average in the past century, and this trend is very likely to continue, with the largest increases in the wettest places.

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