By Judson Jones and Sara Ruberg
A powerful storm system that was not quite a tropical storm dropped historic amounts of rainfall in southeastern North Carolina on Monday, forecasters said, leading to flooded businesses and collapsed roads in a region hit by Tropical Storm Debby just last month.
Despite having tropical storm force winds above 39 mph, the storm fell technically short of becoming what would have been the eighth named storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, Helene.
But even without the name, the hazards were the same. The storm unleashed flash flooding and wind gusts stronger than 60 mph along the North Carolina coast, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center said Monday afternoon.
Debby brought more than 1 foot of rain across some parts of the Carolinas in August, and forecasters did not initially expect that much rain to fall Monday. But by early afternoon, some locations in North Carolina had already seen nearly 15 inches of rain, catching residents, officials and forecasters by surprise.
More than 18 inches of rain fell in Carolina Beach between midnight Sunday and Monday afternoon. Forecasters in Wilmington called the likelihood of that amount of rain occurring in only 12 hours a one-in-a-1,000-year event.
The National Weather Service pushed flash flood warnings for parts of Raleigh, North Carolina, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and surrounding areas issued Monday night into Tuesday. Northern Cumberland County got about 4 to 5 inches of rain by late Monday.
Larry Ashley, a retiree in Southport, North Carolina, where some of the flooding and road damage took place Monday, said the rain was unlike anything he’s seen before.
“It was like having a bucket of water dumped on you constantly,” he said.
Mayor Lynn Barbee of Carolina Beach, a town just south of Wilmington, said that many parts of his town were 2 to 3 feet underwater Monday. Emergency teams made dozens of rescues in the area and most businesses downtown were impacted by floodwaters, the mayor said.
He added that Monday was the third major flooding event in Carolina Beach in the past few months that the town did not anticipate. He said he knew the storm would be an issue when the wind began to pick up and it sounded like a hurricane.
“We sort of feel like we’re in rainstorm alley,” Barbee said.
The fire department in Wilmington made multiple water rescues in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, where the water was waist-deep, according to a post on its Facebook page. New Hanover County Fire Rescue said in a social media post that it saved two people trapped in a car.
Schools in New Hanover County dismissed all students early Monday and said classes Tuesday would be conducted remotely. Some students at Carolina Beach Elementary were taken home early Monday by emergency vehicles when flooding began and parents were unable to reach their children, Barbee said.
Tuesday classes were canceled for schools in neighboring Brunswick County, which closed government offices Monday because of a declared state of emergency.
WECT, a television station in Wilmington, showed footage of cars and cargo vans stuck in floodwaters, as well as road closures in the area. Several roads in Brunswick County collapsed or partially collapsed Monday, according to posts made on Facebook by the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office.
Officials in Southport, about 30 miles south of Wilmington, closed the roads to all incoming traffic Monday and told residents to shelter in place at their homes or places of work, according to the city’s Facebook posts.
Chris Adams, a supervisor for Omni Electric in Wilmington, said Monday evening that two of his work crews had been stuck in flooded stretches of Highway 17 in Brunswick County since 10:30 a.m. and were still unable to make it home. He said parts of the road had been washed out and some were still underwater.
“I don’t think anyone expected it to be as bad as it is,” he said.
Key things to know:
— The storm system is expected to continue to move slowly inland Monday night into Tuesday, spreading heavy rain across North Carolina. On Tuesday, the remnants of the storm will move into Virginia, bringing the potential for some flooding rains across the commonwealth into Wednesday morning.
— More akin to a typical storm system over the United States, the storm’s energy came from interacting air masses instead of from the rising warm, humid air of the ocean that feeds tropical cyclones.
— As the storm approached land, its winds weakened below tropical storm force (39 mph or greater), prompting the hurricane center to drop the tropical storm warnings that had flanked the coast.
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