While Donald Trump concerns himself with causing fresh pain for the families who lost loved ones in Hurricane Maria, Florence—now reduced to Tropical Storm status—continues to park on top of the Carolinas and deliver record levels of rain. Thousands have been rescued from flooded homes, many of them by volunteers driving boats along flooded streets, as the area continued to feel the force of 50 mph sustained winds and the ever-pounding rain.
As expected, Florence has continued to weaken, and should fall to Tropical Depression status sometime on Saturday. However, it has also all but halted its motion, and the center of the storm is currently drifting across the northern part of South Carolina at a speed of only 2 mph. That very slow movement has left the storm parked over one area for a prolonged time, increasing the rainfall dramatically. Even as the storm’s winds are dying, Weather Underground is calling it a “Category 5 Flood Threat” with rainfall totals from 20 to 40 inches across an expansive area. As of 0700 ET, Newport, North Carolina was within a quarter inch of the all time rainfall record for a storm anywhere in the state. That record was likely broken in the same hour as the measurement was taken.
An unexpectedly high number of residents who choose to ride out the storm, only to find themselves trapped by rising waters, has left emergency services in some areas overwhelmed. Some of those rescued have reported waiting for hours in attics or on rooftops as the water surges through and around their homes. Volunteer groups who have traveled to the region from states as far away as Louisiana and Indiana have reported thousands of rescues so far.
The Washington Post reports that there have been at least five deaths directly linked to the storm. Meanwhile, nearly a million residents of the region are without power, with three quarters of those on the North Carolina side, where storm surge has been particularly harsh. Additional flooding may bring the size of the outage to over 3 million. The slow progress of the storm, with continued heavy rain and high winds in a single region, means that even with hundreds of utility crews standing by to make repairs, there have been few opportunities to address outages. Power lines are down under standing water, and winds remain too high for many operations.
The Red Cross reports over 20,000 people at its shelters in the area, and warns that many of them could be looking at prolonged stays.
The National Weather Service has forecast another 6 — 10 inches of rain for southeast North Carolina and coastal regions of northwest South Carolina on Saturday morning, bringing a renewed threat of flash floods for the already drenched region.