Tennessee
A state of emergency, near-historic flooding: How Tennessee fared after weekend storms
Shocking drone video shows Rives flooded after broken levee
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency warning for Rives, Tennessee, after a levee along Obion River failed, flooding the town.
Tresa Summar bought her home in the small, West Tennessee town of Rives a year ago. Sunday, she was ferried away from that home with nothing but the clothes on her back as flood waters began to consume the community.
“This has been very, very traumatizing, not knowing what the unknown is,” Summar said. “We lost our home and right now, I don’t know what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go.”
Summar and almost all of the 250 residents in Rives, a community 20 minutes from the Kentucky state line, were forced to evacuate when a levee failed after rounds of rain pummeled the state Saturday.
The storm hit Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia with flash flooding, hail and tornado threats over the weekend. It left at least 12 dead, mostly in Kentucky.
While Tennessee was spared from rising death tolls, flooding ravaged cities across the state.
Obion County Mayor Steve Carr declared a state of emergency for Rives. Officials used boats to evacuate people and power was shut off to parts of the town. Drivers headed toward the small town were turned away.
Officials set up shelters at Ridgemont Elementary School and the Woodland Mills Civic Center, where Summar was taken, to provide food, shelter and clothing for displaced residents in Rives.
“I’ve been here 35 years, and this is one I’ve never seen before,” Rives Fire Chief Campbell Rice said Monday.
Flooded roads, homes in Middle Tennessee
Similar scenes played out near Nashville.
Authorities in Sumner County closed more than a dozen roads over the weekend as murky water crept up on roadways, and Clarksville fire crews rescued people from flooded homes and streets on Sunday.
About 5.92 inches of rain fell there Saturday — the second highest daily precipitation total measured in Clarksville behind 6.66 inches on Sept. 26, 2002 — inundating roadways, according to the National Weather Service Nashville. Four of the top seven daily rainfall totals have occurred within the past 10 months, the weather service said.
The Clarksville Street Department announced that several roads had reopened Monday as water receded.
The City of Clarksville said on it’s Facebook page the American Red Cross established a shelter at Clarksville Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 1230 Northfield Drive, to assist those impacted by flooding.
Rivers cause for concern
As the rain kept falling well into Sunday, officials remained cautious about the rivers in Middle Tennessee.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers increased its hours to manage a waterways and water release from reservoirs with keen eyes on the Cumberland River and the Red River at Port Royal in Montgomery and Robertson counties.
Sunday morning, the Cumberland River in Nashville crested at 35.85 feet, and hit 51.2 feet in Clarskville, about four feet shy of a major flood.
The Red River at Port Royal crested at 45.6 feet, the third-highest flood crest on record, behind May 2010 and March 1975, the City of Clarksville said on it’s Facebook page.
Staff reporter Kelly Puente contributed reporting.
Tennessee baseball received a commitment from UC Irvine pitcher Ricky Ojeda on June 19.
Ojeda, who is eligible for the MLB draft in July, announced his decision on social media. He visited Tennessee on June 15-16.
The lefthanded Ojeda had a strong 2026 season primarily as a reliever, posting a 3.77 ERA with 62 strikeouts and 20 walks in 62 innings. In 2025, he became the first reliever to be named Big West Pitcher of the Year after going 13-1 with a 3.55 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 66 innings, which also earned him a third-team all-American nod from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game.
Whether Ojeda makes it to Tennessee remains an open question. Perfect Game ranked him as the No. 179 prospect for the draft. That would place him in the sixth round.
Should Ojeda join the staff, however, he would instantly become one of the team’s top options out of a bullpen that struggled immensely in 2026. The pitching staff is also under new leadership under pitching coach Austin Knight, who was hired from ECU.
Ojeda is the fourth player to announce they will transfer to Tennessee this offseason, joining two-way Mercer transfer Braydon Kersey, Northwestern State pitcher Brody Trosclair and Air Force infielder Wyatt Hanoian.
Who’s leaving Tennessee baseball
- UTL Jay Abernathy (Oklahoma)
- RHP Nic Abraham
- INF Ariel Antigua (Arizona)
- INF Finley Bates
- RHP Ari Bethea
- OF Hutson Chance
- RHP Sawyer Deering (San Diego State)
- OF Nate Eisfelder
- 1B Evan Hankins (Virginia Tech)
- UTL Hunter High
- RHP Brayden Krenzel (Arkansas)
- INF Manny Marin
- INF Ethan Moore (Missouri)
- UTL Chris Newstrom
- LHP Taylor Tracey
- C Cash Williams (West Virginia)
Who’s joining Tennessee baseball
- RHP/DH Braydon Kersey
- LHP Brody Trosclair
- INF Wyatt Hanoian
- LHP Ricky Ojeda
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
JACKSON, Tenn. (WBBJ) – An exciting day of sporting clays in West Tennessee is doubling as a major fight against hunger.
Today’s “Shooting Hunger” event took place at the Carroll County Shooting Sports Park in Huntingdon. It’s a partnership between Tennessee Farm Bureau, Tennessee Farmers Co-Op, Farm Credit Mid-America and Rural First.
Since 2015, Shooting Hunger has helped provide more than three million meals to Tennesseans with money going to food banks, backpack programs, and local hunger relief. A $500 scholarship will also go to the top youth shooter in each flight.
“We’re joining together to raise money for school backpacks to feed hungry kids. We do these, we actually do three of these across the state of Tennessee so at the end of the day we take, we take all the money we put it into a pile and when we divide equally amongst all 95 counties across the state of Tennessee,“ said Bryan Wright, executive vice president for the Tennessee Farm Bureau.
Organizers say events like this matter because one in six children in Tennessee struggle with hunger.
Copyright 2026 WBBJ. All rights reserved.
Tennessee director of track and field Duane Ross gauged the hunger of the men’s 4×100-meter relay team to pull off the upset.
“They said, ‘Coach, we’re going to win,’ ” Ross said. “When they bring you that much confidence, you can grab your popcorn and enjoy the meet.”
No popcorn was consumed, but the appetite was there from the start.
Traunard Folson, Davonte Howell, T’Mars McCallum and Elijah Clark finished in a school record time of 37.98 seconds at the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 12 in Eugene, Oregon. It was the the program’s first national title in the 4×100 since 1983 and the fourth-fastest in NCAA history.
Four other relay teams never crossed the line. Auburn, the two-time defending champion, had run an NCAA-record 37.75 in the semifinal, but had a botched handoff on the last exchange. Arkansas, the reigning SEC champion, also dropped its baton, along with Oregon and Houston.
McCallum said staying clean through a race of chaos starts with a focus on winning, even in practice.
“In the moment we can’t really worry about anything else, just what we can control,” McCallum said on June 18. “We came to practice every time with the idea of, ‘OK, we’ve got to make sure this is fixed, because we know if we run that time, we can win.’ “
It was the final event of McCallum’s college career. It didn’t fully hit until the long flight home to Knoxville.
“I was like, we really did it,” he said. “Now we have a school record, the first team to ever go under 38 seconds here.”
Whether belief had anything to do with what went wrong in those four other lanes isn’t something Tennessee’s runners can answer. It’s exactly what they point to for why theirs didn’t.
Clark, a freshman who ran the anchor leg, said winning was just a matter of starting the race.
“We knew we had it the whole time,” he said. “No matter who did what, what happened, we knew what the outcome would come to.”
Ross said the victory wasn’t a surprise inside the program either.
“I wouldn’t say unsung,” Ross said. “I’ve watched this team all year long, and we were expecting to come out of there with the championship. It was a tight competition down to the last event.”
Tennessee finished third in the men’s team standings with 46 points, its best total since 2002.
Howell, a junior who ran the second leg, said the belief behind the relay team’s confidence was built long before the race.
“Three of the four of us already ran under 10 seconds,” he said. “Last year we all trained together during the summer, all lived together. We already had the bond, and adding the freshman on anchor was just a cherry on top. He figured it out at SECs, ran a 10.1, season’s best, and we trusted him to bring it home.”
Clark said the title is already part of something bigger to him.
“The goal is to always make history,” said Clark, who was hired by Tennessee four years ago after a successful run at North Carolina A&T. “It’s been one of my dreams. To be able to be on the wall, especially at a school like this, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
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