How Hurricane Florence Set Two U.S. State Rainfall Records

DISCUSSION: Though it has already been a couple of weeks since Hurricane Florence barreled into the North Carolina and South Carolina coastal regions, there is still a ton of information which needs to be and is yet to be processed. It goes without saying that despite an incredibly accurate 5-day future track forecast for Hurricane Florence, major flooding concerns continued to loom over the Carolinas in the days leading up to the final approach and ultimate landfall of Hurricane Florence. The combination of a prolific storm surge as well as heavy rainfall led to widespread regional flooding and flash flooding over the course of several days.

In diving a little deeper into the story behind the impacts of hurricane Florence, it is important to note just a few more reasons for why Hurricane Florence will undoubtedly go down in history as of one of more historic U.S. natural disasters in recorded history. When it came to trying to anticipate the most likely flooding potential scenario associated with Hurricane Florence, the majority of forecasters had a very good inclination that there would most certainly be many areas across North Carolina, South Carolina, and beyond which would end up receiving prolonged periods of heavy rainfall. However, what was not foreseen in the majority of rainfall forecasts was the scenario wherein adjacent U.S. states (i.e., North Carolina and South Carolina) would each break respective tropical cyclone event rainfall records. In fact, this is precisely what would end up happening across those respective states. This is reflected in greater detail by the context of the graphic suite attached above (courtesy of Meteorologist Michael Lowry).

With or without this tropical cyclone event rainfall record being broken, the flooding in and of itself was horrifying and the lasting impacts as well as aftermath of this tremendous flooding event has left many people in a state of disrepair and shock. The lasting message which can be taken from the impacts of Hurricane Florence is that even though Hurricane Florence only made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane (as previously stated many times recently across social media but absolutely deserves to be re-stated), this never meant that there was any less of a storm surge or flooding threat from Florence as everyone in the path of this storm went on to find out first-hand. Thus, as said many times before but bears repeating, it only takes one storm to make a life-changing difference for someone and everyone should always respect the natural power of an approaching tropical cyclone.

To learn more about other past historic weather events from around the world, be sure to click here!

© 2018 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz