Hard rain of 1 foot and more inundated the southeastern coast of North Carolina on Monday as a storm with no name moved ashore and aimed for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
The National Hurricane Center calls it Potential Tropical Cyclone 8 and said in forecast updates that the front will weaken as it travels over terrain overnight.
The worst of the disturbance may have already affected the region, where a National Weather Service volunteer weather station measured 18 inches of rain Monday at Carolina Beach, which closed town offices and its recreation center, according to a statement.
Carolina Beach State Park was also closed for the day, park officials said. U.S. Highway 17 south of Wilmington was also shut down, according to state and local officials.
Similar volunteer weather stations at other coastal locations, including at Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport, reported rain amounts of more than 14 inches, the weather service said.
A National Weather Service forecaster said it was too soon to say if the amounts were record breakers, but that the weather service office in Wilmington will likely have that answer late Tuesday morning.
Buildings in New Hanover County, on the southeast coast, have been damaged by floodwaters, the office of Gov. Roy Cooper reported.
“We are seeing serious flooding due to heavy rainfall so make sure you do not drive through flooded roads,” Cooper said in a statement Monday.
A flash flood event was confirmed for the community of Kelly, North Carolina, about 38 miles inland from Wilmington, the weather service said. A roadway was closed there as a result, it said.
Multiple roads were washed out in Brunswick County, where the sheriff’s office shared images of roads turned into waterways or made impassable by missing sections of asphalt.
It was in central Brunswick County on Monday afternoon that the National Weather Service said residents should take cover because “a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado” was threatening the area near Leland, according to a tornado warning that has since expired.
Tornado warnings for Emerald Isle, Swansboro, Cape Carteret and Cedar Point expired early Monday evening. It wasn’t clear if any tornadoes touched down, and the weather service usually doesn’t verify them until at least the next day; it sends ground observers to possible sites when it’s safe to do so.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation reported multiple weather-related road closures and said the Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry and the Bayview-Aurora ferry suspended operations on Monday.
The governor’s office said there were weather-related road closures in Sampson, Duplin, Brunswick, New Hanover, Onslow and Pender counties.
The state’s Emergency Operations Center was put on an “enhanced” operations mode, Cooper’s office said, and state swift water rescue crews were ready to deploy where needed.
By Monday evening, the weather service’s office in Wilmington declared that the worst of the front had passed.
“The heavy rain has ended,” it said in a flash flood statement. “Flooding is no longer expected to pose a threat.”
The disturbance was 45 miles west of Cape Fear and traveling north-northwest at 7 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. Maximum sustained winds have diminished to 35 mph, though earlier in the day the weather service volunteer station at Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point measured a gust of 77 mph.
Sustained winds of 74 mph qualify a storm for hurricane status. A small craft advisory, which warns of “dangerous boating conditions,” covered the waters from Cape Hatteras to Ocracoke Inlet on Monday and was in effect through Wednesday morning.
As wind gusts of up to 28 mph were expected on the Atlantic, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-tracked buoy measured wave heights of 11 feet off Cape Hatteras.
“Continued weakening is expected during the next day or so, and the low is forecast to dissipate over the Carolinas by early Wednesday,” the hurricane center said in its advisory.
Eight million people across the Carolinas were covered by tropical storm watches or warnings on Monday.
The disturbance was expected to travel across the central Appalachians, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday and then bring showers to eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and southern New York on Wednesday, according to NBC News meteorologists.
Federal and NBC News forecasters have said the storm hasn’t had enough time over the normally fertile waters of the warm Atlantic to form into anything more potent than a potential tropical cyclone.
As it makes landfall Monday night and then moves over terrain toward the Northeast, forecasters say, it will disintegrate and have virtually no chance of earning a name.
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