Six years ago this week, Hurricane Florence slammed southeastern North Carolina with devastating flooding, but for Carolina Beach, the unnamed tropical system on Sept. 16 was even worse. Here's why.
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00:00And we want to talk to AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter about this storm event and also
00:05something else on the horizon, John.
00:07John, this was an amazing event last, well, over the past 36 hours there in southern North
00:11Carolina.
00:13It sure was, and this is why AccuWeather experts were warning ahead of all other sources, as
00:17you mentioned, about the extreme risks that were posed by this storm, which was never
00:22named by the government's National Hurricane Center, yet produced a wide variety of significant
00:27life-threatening impacts.
00:29Look at this radar review over multiple hours.
00:33It was a band of extremely heavy rain.
00:36It's the only way we could describe this as a firehose of Atlantic moisture directed right
00:41at a localized area from Wilmington south toward Carolina Beach and down toward Cape
00:46Fear, a true flash flooding disaster in these communities, with rain rates of 5 to 6 inches
00:52per hour.
00:53And I didn't mean to cut you off there, John.
00:55It is incredible rain, and this time of the year we can get into big trouble.
00:59It was six years ago today that we're wrapping up our fourth day of excessive rain, really
01:04in the same area, and it's been kind of interesting to compare what a 20 to 40-inch rain event
01:09brings over four days compared to an 18, 19-inch rain event in just 18 to 20 hours.
01:16Right.
01:17Those were very impressive totals with Florence, of course, as the storm stalled, but look
01:21at the wide area that was impacted by that extremely heavy rainfall of 20 to 40 inches,
01:27as you mentioned.
01:29In this case we were dealing with a much more focused area here, really a couple of counties,
01:34but the impact was even greater because it all fell in a very short period of time there.
01:40And John, as we look ahead, we still have plenty of hurricane season to go, sometimes
01:44at least for me to keep things in perspective, I kind of like the baseball game analogy,
01:49and we're at the bottom of the fifth, top of the sixth inning here.
01:51There's a lot more hurricane season to go, and sometimes the run production is not evenly
01:55distributed over every inning.
01:57We saw some action early in the season.
01:59We're going to see some more activity in the weeks to come.
02:02That's right.
02:03Unfortunately, there are more at-bats to go.
02:05That's been our message here to not let our guard down anywhere as it relates to this
02:10hurricane season because we think the end of the season is going to be very active.
02:14That's been our message, and next week we have serious concerns about this setup that
02:18we see.
02:19The players, to use your baseball analogy, the players that are on the field are concerning.
02:24Whether they'll all come together in exactly the right way, that will remain to be seen.
02:28But at this time, AccuWeather experts are highlighting a medium risk for tropical storm
02:33or hurricane development here in the Caribbean up toward the Gulf and even parts of the southwest
02:38Atlantic.
02:39And the concern is that something, a tropical storm can develop in the Caribbean, and then
02:44because of this dip in the jet stream, can be drawn to the north into the eastern Gulf
02:48of Mexico.
02:49So we're reporting everywhere from Louisiana, east of Florida, even the Carolinas, on alert
02:55about increased risk for hurricane impacts here later next week.
03:00And also, this setup is such that a storm that does develop could be drawn north along
03:05the coast.
03:06If you have a variety of concerns, you'll want to download the AccuWeather app, turn
03:10on push notifications, and keep in touch with us even more frequently than normal here over
03:15the next week.
03:16All right, John.
03:17Point worth making that that window of time is for the development, basically the initialization
03:22of a new storm to develop.
03:24So the impacts may follow beyond the 27th, maybe right up into the beginning of October.
03:29AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter, thanks again for your insight.
03:33All right, John.