JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Hurricane Florence packed a one-two punch of flooding for the Carolinas. When the hurricane moved ashore, it brought significant storm surge flooding along the coastline. As Florence moved inland, the flooding from rainfall began.
Rainfall totals are being amassed from Florence and they are staggering in some cases. Many of the reports are not official because of power outages and such, but the National Weather Service in Raleigh released a report of the rainfall totals from Florence.
Click here to read the list of rainfall totals by town.
Click here to read the list of maximum wind gusts by town.
Hurricane Florence was a long-lived Cape Verde hurricane and the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the Carolinas. The sixth named storm, third hurricane, and the first major hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, Florence originated from a strong tropical wave that emerged off the west coast of Africa on August 30, 2018.
Florence became a tropical depression near Cape Verde on August 31 and progressed west-northwest, becoming a tropical storm on September 1. Florence strengthened rapidly on Sept. 4-5, becoming a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
Florence weakened to a tropical storm by Sept. 7, but the system regained hurricane strength on Sept. 9 and major hurricane status with winds of 140 mph on Sept. 10. However, increasing wind shear caused the storm's winds to gradually weaken over the next few days.
However, the storm's wind field continued to grow. By the evening of Sept. 13, Florence had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach early on Saturday, Sept. 15, and weakened further as it slowly moved inland.
Florence produced extensive wind damage along the North Carolina coast from Cape Lookout, across Carteret, Onslow, Pender and New Hanover counties.
Thousands of downed trees caused widespread power outages to nearly all of eastern North Carolina. The historic legacy of Hurricane Florence will be record-breaking storm surge of 9 to 13 feet and devastating rainfall of 20 to 30 inches, which produced catastrophic and life-threatening flooding.
The hardest hit areas included New Bern, Newport, Belhaven, Oriental, North Topsail Beach and Jacksonville, along with Downeast Carteret County, or basically south of a line from Kinston to Cedar Island. A storm total rainfall of 34.0 inches was reported in Swansboro, while the NWS office in Newport recorded 25.2 inches. Wind gusts of 106 mph were reported at Cape Lookout with 105 mph at Fort Macon.