Stormy Weather Debby hit land again Thursday in South Carolina. It was then on its way up the East Coast, where people as far north as Vermont are expected to get several inches of rain this weekend.
What the National Hurricane Center said was that Debby hit land near Bulls Bay, South Carolina. More rain and possibly floods are on the way as the storm moves inland. By the weekend, it will have reached the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.
Weather experts said that Debby would get weaker and turn into a tropical depression by Thursday afternoon or evening.
As a Category 1 hurricane, the storm hit land for the first time early Monday morning on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The Miami-based storm center said that as of Thursday at 2 p.m. EDT, it had top sustained winds of 40 mph. Debby’s center was about 100 miles southwest of Raleigh, North Carolina, and about 55 miles east-southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was going 10 mph north-northwest.
The hurricane center said that Debby would drop an extra 3 to 6 inches of rain across parts of southeastern North Carolina, with higher amounts in some places. This would bring the overall amount of rain from the storm to as much as 15 inches.
If it rains another 1 to 3 inches in some parts of eastern South Carolina, the overall amount of rain could reach 25 inches. For parts of eastern South Carolina and southeast North Carolina through Friday, forecasts say “considerable flooding” is likely.
From North Carolina to Virginia, it’s going to rain 3 to 7 inches or more until Friday. This will probably cause flash floods in rivers and cities. It could rain two to four inches or more in Maryland, Upstate New York, and Vermont through Friday night. This could also cause floods.
Debby’s rain is thought to have killed at least six people. Four of them died in Florida, two of them children. The other three died in Georgia and North Carolina.
PowerOutage.us says that more than 120,000 people lost power early Thursday in North Carolina, which is in Debby’s path.
Early Thursday morning, Debby may have caused several tornadoes. One of them, Wilson County Emergency Management Director Gordon Deno said, damaged the Springfield Middle School in Lucama, North Carolina. He also said that several houses and a church were damaged, but no one was hurt.
“All of us were moved to tears when we saw how badly our community was hit.” “It comes down to us all,” Jamie Driver told Patrick Torphy of CBS News.
Robert Driver, her husband, is a fireman for the Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department and her son goes to that school.
The Charleston office of the National Weather Service also said that survey teams confirmed four tornadoes that were caused by Debbie.
Huger is about 15 miles northeast of Charleston. In the afternoon, Gene Taylor was waiting for a few inches of water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide went by.
Taylor knew last week that water was possible, so he started moving things out of his house or up higher. Taylor said that this was the fourth time in the last nine years that floodwaters got into his house. He learned his lesson the hard way.
“We know it’s best to be ready for the worst in order to save everything.” It’s too bad I think we got it,” Taylor said.
A few doors down, Charles Grainger was having to clean up after his house got about 8 inches of water.
Grainger said, “Eight inches changes everything in your life.” “It’s not something you get used to. You just smile and deal with it. It comes with living by the creek.
At least four dams were broken in Bulloch County, Georgia, northwest of Savannah. At a briefing, officials said that no one had been killed.
The head of emergency management for the county, Corey Kemp, said that more than 75 people were saved from the floodwaters. About 100 roads were also closed.
Roy Thompson, Chairman of the Bulloch County Commission, said, “We’ve had to deal with a lot of things we’ve never had to deal with before.” “I’ve lived in Bulloch County for over 78 years and have never seen anything like this.” The things that have happened and will continue to happen until all the water goes away are truly amazing.
For people who live on Tappan Zee Drive in the suburban area of Pooler, which is west of Savannah, Debby’s rain felt like it happened again. When Hurricane Matthew hit in October 2016, it flooded a nearby canal and some of the same houses.
The neighborhood is about 30 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean, and there are no creeks or rivers nearby, so it doesn’t look like a place that would be likely to flood in a tropical storm. But people who live on that street say sewage issues have been there for more than ten years, even though the city has tried to fix them.
It rained all the way up to the Great Lakes and in New York and New Jersey during Debby. National Weather Service scientist Scott Kleebauer says that the tropical storm’s moisture made another system stronger on Tuesday evening, which led to strong thunderstorms.
“We had a multi-round period of showers and thunderstorms that kind of scooted from Michigan eastward,” said Kleebauer.
In less than four hours, it rained up to six inches in some places in New Jersey.
Officials in New York City warned of possible flash floods by flying drones with loudspeakers over some neighborhoods and telling people in basement apartments to be ready to leave at any time. A lot of water rescues were reported in and around the city.
PowerOutage.us said that as of noon Thursday, about 260,000 people in Ohio were still without power after severe storms that included two confirmed tornadoes. Electricity company workers from FirstEnergy’s Illuminating Company said on social media that fixing the power would take days because of the damage.
South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster said that his state was just starting Act 2 of a three-act play. More than 60 homes were injured, but the roads and water systems were not in major trouble.
The last act could happen next week if it rains enough upstream in North Carolina to flood rivers as they flow to the Atlantic Ocean.
Each of North Carolina and Virginia had a state of emergency in place. Maryland declared a “state of preparedness,” which helps with planning without actually calling for an emergency.