A slow-moving storm was working its way up the East Coast Sunday afternoon, bringing drenching rains, gusty winds and probably enough coastal flooding to inundate waterfront property and cause beach erosion.
The most extreme weather will be at the coast, forecasters said, with the risk for significant coastal flooding highest in the Mid-Atlantic. The coasts of Delaware, southern New Jersey and the Virginia Tidewater, a low-lying area of eastern Virginia named for the tidal rivers that flow through it, are especially susceptible.
The storm was on track to affect Southeastern states Sunday, the Mid-Atlantic from Sunday into Monday, and New England from late Sunday into Tuesday.
In addition to the high risk of flooding, the storm was expected to bring damaging winds up to 60 miles per hour at the coast, and up to 40 m.p.h. inland.
New York City is predicted to record 1.5 to three inches of rain from Sunday into Monday.
Forecasters said that isolated wind gusts could reach 60 m.p.h. on Long Island and at the Jersey Shore from Sunday night into Monday, though they’re not expected to reach the level of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when wind speeds topped 70-80 m.p.h.
Coastal areas from South Carolina to New England were predicted to record two to four inches, even five inches, of rain in the coming days. Washington and Philadelphia are likely to record about half an inch to one inch.
By 9 a.m. Sunday, a main street in downtown Georgetown, S.C., about 70 miles north of Charleston, was already flooded, and county officials were reporting many other flooded streets and stranded vehicles.
In North Carolina, near Surf City, the storm revealed part of the wreckage of a ship that ran aground on a sandbar in 1919, according to Matthew Huddleston, a meteorologist at the CBS affiliate in Raleigh.
About 4,300 customers in North Carolina and another 4,800 in Virginia were without power early Sunday afternoon.
New Jersey had already declared a state of emergency late Saturday; it will stay in effect into late Monday.
Road closures, power failures, and airport delays are among the possible consequences of the storm, which is a nor’easter, forecasters said, because winds will be coming out of the northeast.
Airports from Washington to Boston were already reporting ground delays of about 90 minutes.
Though nor’easters usually occur between November and March, meteorologists say they can also form earlier in the fall and in the late spring.
The storms can develop 100 miles east or west of the coastline, from as far south as Georgia to New Jersey and beyond up north, according to the National Weather Service.
The current system formed off the coast of the southeastern United States on Friday, bringing rain to Florida on Friday and drenching coastal Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday.
The Outer Banks in North Carolina, Long Island, New Jersey and eastern Massachusetts, including Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, could get the highest rainfall amounts and some of the strongest winds.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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