2009 Southeastern United States floods

2009 Southeast United States floods

Satellite image of flooding near Atlanta, Georgia
Date	September 15-23, 2009
Location	Northern Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas
Deaths	10 deaths
Property damage	At least $500 million

The 2009 Southeastern United States floods were a group of floods that affected several counties throughout northern Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. The worst flooding occurred across the Atlanta metropolitan area. Continuous rain, spawned by moisture pulled from the Gulf of Mexico, fell faster than the local watersheds could drain the runoff.

Initial damages from around the state were estimated at $250 million. On September 26, Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine raised the estimated cost to $500 million with the potential for it to rise. Some 20,000 homes, businesses and other buildings received major damage and 17 Georgia counties received Federal Disaster Declarations. The flood is blamed for at least ten deaths.

The floods were historic, breaking records that went back more than a century in some locations. The Chattahoochee River, the largest river in the region, measured water levels at a 500-year flood level.

Rain began falling on the Atlanta area on September 15, 2009, with the National Weather Service reporting only 0.04 inches that day at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Additional rain fell throughout the week, with only a trace amount recorded for September 18. However, a large rain event began to inundate the area on September 19. The official NWS monitoring station at the Atlanta airport recorded 3.70 inches (94 mm) of rainfall from daybreak to 8pm (more than doubling the previous record for rainfall on that date), while outlying monitoring stations recorded 5 inches (130 mm) of rainfall in a 13-hour period. Flooding began in one neighborhood that day, with the remainder of the area placed under a flash flood watch for the rest of the weekend.