As river levels slowly return to normal, flooding has kept hanging around in many parts of the Southeast.
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00:00We continue to monitor flooding issues in the southeast. It's just been a slow decline
00:06after what was over a week ago that Debbie just doused the southeast and mid-Atlantic states,
00:13and we're still feeling the impacts. Joining me right now is AccuWeather flood expert
00:18Alex Cisnowski. You know, Alex, before we get into what's going on right now,
00:23I kind of want to look back and, you know, it just shows you the impact of Debbie,
00:28because I have the 30-day rainfall in here, and the earmarks of Debbie can still be seen with
00:35that dark green from west Florida all the way into the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic and in the parts
00:40of the northeast. Yeah, absolutely. Notice how solid those darker greens are in the Carolinas
00:46and eastern Georgia and northern Florida. That's where Debbie had its greatest concentration of
00:52rainfall. It just poured for many hours. You get up into the northeast, it was more spotty,
00:57little more narrow bands of heavy rain, and that image you were just showing there as you
01:02led into my segment here, that was like a small stream. Those tend to flood immediately during
01:10heavy rainfall. The larger rivers, the larger the rivers, the longer a period of time it takes.
01:16You're looking at the Cape Fear here now. This is cresting here at moderate stage,
01:22but there have been some rivers, a number of rivers that were cresting at major stage in
01:26the last few days, and we still have some that have yet to crest. The Waccamaw River near Conway,
01:34that's still coming up. That's going to crest at major stage, close to 15 feet here, probably
01:40sometime early next week. The closer these rivers are to the coast, the longer it's going to take
01:47them to cycle through, and we're mostly talking about lowland areas of the Carolinas now that
01:53are experiencing the flooding problems here. But it's going to take a few more days before
01:57things improve, unfortunately. Alex, was it because the nature of the storm and the widespread rains,
02:03or just the way in which the river system works in the southeast that it's been such a slow,
02:11slow, gradual turn downward? I mean, a week after Debbie moved through, we're still dealing with it.
02:17Well, this is a permanent factor down there. As these rivers grind toward the coast,
02:24the terrain becomes very flat. It's just a few dozen feet above sea level, and the rivers tend
02:29to widen out. So it takes a long time for that water to move through. The slower flowing the
02:35river is, the longer it's going to take those floodwaters to cycle through. In a lot of cases,
02:40these rivers behave a lot like the main stem in the Mississippi for that aspect. You get up into
02:47the foothills and up into the mountains, the terrain is steep. So the angle the river is
02:52descending in elevation is fairly steep, so the rivers tend to flow through there very fast. So
02:57the flooding cycles through there faster. Alex, any concern this weekend? Because we have that
03:02dip in the jet stream coming into the northeast that sends a front southward, and there's going
03:06to be some downpours Saturday and Sunday in some of these areas. Yeah, it's going to be rounds of
03:12rain coming here probably through Monday, I would think. Not all at once, not continuous,
03:19so that will allow the landscape to generally absorb most of this. But there's still going to
03:24be some small stream issues, some urban issues. And I think some of that runoff will get into
03:29the rivers too. So you'll probably see a secondary rise in some of the Midlands and upstate areas of
03:35the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia with this. It'll probably take some time for that to work down
03:41into the lowlands, so it may slow the rate of recession at some point later next week or later
03:47in the month there. But I don't think it's going to be a big factor for the flooding that's going
03:51on now in the lowlands. All right, Akua, the flooding expert. Alex is announcing. Alex, thanks
03:56for the information. My pleasure, Brent.