Water lifts sod after heavy rain, turns Alabama yard into a ‘waterbed’

Last Friday, three inches of rain flooded Lawrence County, Alabama.

When the skies cleared, Mt. Hope resident Sharon Jeffreys stepped outside to find her yard had "bubbled."

"I looked over in our side yard and there were two or three spots of about a 5- to 10-foot area," she tells AL.com. "It just kinda freaked us out."

"That is just something," she says in a video of her "sod surfing" on her property.

"It was like walking on a water bed," Jeffreys recalls. "I didn't move real fast because I didn't know if it would break through."

When a local meteorologist posted the video of Jeffreys floating sod on Facebook, it quickly went viral.

"I'd be terrified of a sinkhole being here - you wouldn't get ME out on that!!!" writes one Facebook user.

"All I could think was.... BELLY FLOP!!!!!" writes another.

In a WHNT News 19 report, a spokesman for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System explains how this happens: water fills a crevice beneath the sod, causing it to uproot and lift. Broken water pipes can also cause this waterbed effect.

Jeffreys believes the dense root system prevented the water from draining, forcing it to pool beneath the surface.

"I think the roots were so strong it wouldn't let the water come up through the grass," she says.

Jeffreys' grass was "back to normal" on Monday.