Dumping on areas just drying out from Debby a month ago.
A storm system that was not quite a tropical storm was spinning off the coast of the Carolinas on Monday, dropping what forecasters called “historic rainfall,” rivaling totals that fell during Tropical Storm Debby last month.
Despite having tropical-storm-force winds above 39 miles per hour, the storm fell technically short of becoming what would have been the eighth named storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, Helene. 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.
But even without the name, the hazards are the same. It has produced significant impacts on Monday, with life-threatening flash flooding reported in portions of southeastern North Carolina and wind gusts in excess of 60 mph along the coast, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center said Monday afternoon.
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Tropical Storm Debby brought more that a foot of rain across some parts of the Carolinas in August, submerging vehicles and even putting waste sites at risk. Forecasters did not originally expect as much rain for Monday. But by early afternoon, some locations, like Sunny Point, N.C., had already seen nearly 15 inches of rain, the top end of what fell in North Carolina during Debby.
Carolina Beach, N.C., had seen over 18 inches of rain since midnight, surpassing the 11 inches that fell in the beachfront community during Debby. Forecasters out of Wilmington, N.C., called the likelihood of that amount of rain occurring in only 12 hours a one-in-a-thousand-year event.
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