Historic rainfall drowns Northeast, threatens Southeast areas battered by Florence
The latest round of persistent rain drenching the soggy East has triggered another annual record and brought fears of more flooding to the battered Carolinas.
Washington's Reagan National Airport recorded more than 3 inches of rain since it began raining Friday. That pushed the annual total to more than 61.5 inches, breaking the record of 61.33 inches set in 1889, said Alan Reppert, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Charleston, West Virginia, broke a record set in 2003, totaling 63.29 inches. Baltimore, swamped by more than 2.8 inches of rain, tallied more than 68 inches for the year. The city had already broken its annual record set 15 years ago.
Wilmington, North Carolina, which already smashed its record of 83.65 inches in 1877, reached new heights by crawling just over 100 inches.
"As Wilmington breaks the 100-inch milestone with this event, let's pray the new record stands for another 140 years, and for a much drier 2019," the local National Weather Service office tweeted.
The December storms come on the heels of a record-setting November for the Northeast. Cornell University's Northeast Regional Climate Center reports that Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Wilmington, Delaware, all had their wettest November on record this year.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alan Reppert said the next few days should be dry in the region. But there is bad news rolling in behind the respite – projections call for wetter-than-normal weather for the next few months.
"We've had a lot of flow from the southwest coming out of the Gulf of Mexico," Reppert said. "We can attribute much of the moisture to that."
In the Southeast, residents living along many swollen rivers are bracing for flooding in coming days, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said. Rivers from northern Florida to North Carolina are at minor or moderate flood stage because of rain in the area Friday through Sunday.
Many of the areas are still recovering from Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 storm that tore through the region in September. More than 50 people were killed; damage was in the billions.
"Areas in eastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina, which were hard hit a few months ago by Hurricane Florence, are among the communities dealing with flooded rivers," Pydynowski said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Historic rainfall drowns Northeast, threatens Southeast areas battered by Florence
