Matt's Weather Rapport is written by Vermont-based journalist and weather reporter Matt Sutkoski. This blog has a nationwide and worldwide focus, with particular interest in Vermont and the Northeast. Look to Matt's Weather Rapport for expert analysis of weather events, news, the latest on climate change science, fun stuff, and wild photos and videos of big weather events. Also check for my frequent quick weather updates on Twitter, @mattalltradesb
"Reagan National Airport reported 3.3 inches of rain in an hour, including a half inch of rain in 11 minutes, on Monday morning. Between three and six inches of rain had fallen in Montgomery County by 11 a.m."
For perspective, 3.3 inches of rain is very roughly how much rain we should expect around here in Vermont during a full month.
WTOP goes on: "National Weather Service meteorologiset Cody Ledbetter said the storm dumped about 6.3 inches of rain near Frederick, Maryland, about 4.5 inches near Arlington, Virginia."
Driving into flooded roads is a big no-no. But many people got trapped because they set off for their morning commute before it started raining, then became trapped as the downpours hit and water started rising around their cars.
The National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency, which is meant to (rightly) scare people into getting serious about taking precautions, like staying put and not driving if you were in a safe place that wasn't flooding.
It seemed no place was completely safe. Water even seeped into the White House basement.
As meteorologist Marshall Shepherd noted in Forbes, something called precipitable water was at sky high levels in the DC area Monday morning. It's complicated, but precipitable water is one way of measuring how hard it can potentially rain in a given area.
Precipitable water in the atmosphere was at near record highs at the time of the storms, so all you needed was a trigger to unleash incredible downpours. A weak trough of low pressure in the area did the trick.
You always have to be nervous when they say precipitable water levels are at the highest 1 percent possible. This often leads to flash floods.
Now, climate scientists will tell us that these big flash flood events like the one yesterday are becoming more common as global warming takes hold. Warmer air can hold more water, increasing the chances of flooding downpours.
All this is true. But I think it's impossible to say whether the flood in DC, Maryland and Virginia Monday has a direct line to climate change. Floods like these have always happened, so it could be just chance that this happened. Whether climate change influenced this is right now, anybody's guess.
Of course there's videos.
Here's a compilation of images and clips from NBC:
Here's a clip from the Washington Post. I especially like the sudden waterfalls in the Metro station and in somebody's back yard:
This is, or was, Baker Park in Frederick, Maryland:
LeClaire Bryan, in red shirt, mother of country singer Luke Bryan, is overwhelmed after seeing her home, wrecked by Hurricane Michael last October. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Despite all the predictions, we can't tell for sure how this hurricane season will play out. After the 2017 and 2018 seasons, we can only hope this year is a dud. That's only hope, though.
They're hard to read and even harder to listen to. But you ought to, as they give you a very good motivation to do what meteorologists and emergency managers tell you to do in a weather emergency, be it a hurricane, tornado, flood, winter storm, or whatever other bad stuff comes our way.
You can listen to some parts of the calls in the videos at the bottom of this post, but even the text is scary. People were calling 911, but no paramedics, no ambulance, no firefighters, no police could come to the rescue. The winds were too relentless, too powerful, too dangerous.
"A man stuck in a collapsing trailer begged for help. 'Please come get me, ma'am.' The dispatcher broke down, sobbing. A colleague took over for her. 'Sweetie, I would come and get you right now if I could, I swear. I need you to just stay with me.'"
The man later cries out, "Oh my God, help me please!" The dispatchers could do nothing but urge him to find a (probably nonexistent) interior room in the trailer.
Another 911 caller said, "There's 10 of us in here and the roof's gone." The dispatcher could only tell the to move into an interior space near a load bearing wall. The dispatcher said the calm eye of the storm would move over the caller's location in minutes, but the 10 people had to stay put anyway. There was no time to flee to another shelter before the winds came roaring back.
Another caller was outside, in the terrible storm, on the phone tellling dispatchers a man - his neighbor - had collapsed. He didn't think he was breathing. Didn't know if the man's heart was still beating. Dispatchers tried to coach the caller with CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation. The caller tried.
We later learn the man who collapsed didn't make it. The 911 caller who tried to help the dying man survived.
It's unclear what happened to the man in the collapsed trailer, or the ten people in the roofless house.
All this is to say: Even if the storm doesn't look bad on paper, that you think you'll be fine, do what the weather people and the emergency workers tell you. If they told you to leave, do it. If they tell you to hunker down, do it. If they tell you to hide in the basement, do it. If they tell you the roads are too dangerous to drive on, stay home.
The hardest part of all this to take is reading the comments section of the Tampa Bay Times article.As many commenters pointed out, lots of people don't have the money or the means to evacuate. So they hunker down and pray for the best. I wish we were better at making all socio-economic classes safe in emergencies.
Here are some of the audio tapes. They should all scare you straight. Remember them the next time you face a weather emergency, be it a hurricane or anything else.
The first one is the man in the collapsing trailer, and the sobbing dispatcher and the rising panic in the man's voice, as the trailer blows away and he's out in the storm. I wish I knew what happened to him. Listen:
This next one is the 10 people in the roofless house. The caller asks if they can make a run for it when the eye comes. Should they try piling into a four-wheel drive vehicle and go somewhere? The dispatcher adamantly (and correctly) urges them to stay put in an interior room, even though the roof is goine. Load bearing walls would help. Still sounds awfully scary, though:
Finally, this one is the caller trying to help the dying man with coaching from 911 dispatchers:
People lined up outside one of the few open grocery stores in
Wilmington, North Carolina Sunday. Photo from NBC News
There is now no way to get in or out of Wilmington, North Carolina, at least on the roads.
All roads that lead to and from Wilmington, a city with a population of more than 117,000 are covered in flood water from ex-hurricane Florence.
I don't remember the last time a city was so marooned by a disaster. Maybe New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina? Last year with Hurricane Harvey in Texas?
NBC News reports that few stores and restaurants are open in Wilmington and those that are have only limited supplies of food. On top of that, power is largely out, many of the streets that aren't flooded are a tangled mess of debris, fallen trees and wires. Many buildings have damaged roofs from the 90 mph winds Friday morning and are leaking as more rain falls.
At one supermarket, staff allowed only ten people at a time into the store to maintain order, NBC News said.There was a huge, long line out front. Scuffles broke out at another supermarket.
As you can see in such a big disaster, nerves get extremely frayed after days of dealing with this mess.
At least 17 people have died in the storm so far. Some videos of this storm's effects are at the bottom of this post.
To add to the misery the storm spun off some tornadoes. A television station in Wilmington had to go off the air for awhile as staff took shelter during a tornado warning. When they got back on the air, the roof was leaking.
Many rivers in North and South Carolina are at or near record levels. Even as the rain tapers off, it will take weeks in some cases for the water to recede. This is a long-haul disaster for sure.
Florence, or its remains lingered over the Carolinas all weekend, but it's finally starting to move. It will travel up the Appalachian chain and then head east over or near southern New England.
Flash flood watches are up for this path, although the rain won't be as heavy or nearly as prolonged as it was in North Carolina. Two to four inches of rain are likely in southern New England.
The remains of Florence will likely miss the northern half of Vermont. Southern Vermont will get some downpours.
This is all too bad. Southern Vermont doesn't really need the rain, but northern Vermont does. We can't catch a break, can we?
On the bright side, the big burst of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic has subsided big time, at least for now.
Tropical Storm Joyce way out in the eastern Atlantic, has been downgraded to a depression and will probably dissipate. It is no threat to land.
Tropical Storm Isaac in the Caribbean dissipated and its remnant cluster of showers and thunderstorms was near Jamaica this morning. There's only a small chance that Isaac will redevelop.
ABC News gives us an aerial view of someo of the widespread flooding:
Interesting perspective from a guy who returned to his house for the first time after fleeing. About 12 to 16 inches of water got into the house. The man said he's lucky because they have a second floor and moved some of their possessions upstairs before the flood hit:
Here, the Coast Guard rescues about a dozen beagles from a flooded pen. They said had they got there just a bit later, the dogs would have drowned.
Cape Town, South Africa is about to run out of water. It would be the first major worldwide city to do so.
I'm super worried now about my very close friends Denis and Michael, who live in Cape Town, South Africa.
That's because the city of roughly 3.7 million people is about to completely run out of water. That's right: They're facing an immediate prospect of no water for drinking, cooking, bathing, fire protection, you name it.
Right now, "Zero Day" the day the city runs completely dry, is predicted to be April 12 - recently moved up from April 21.
That means no water from faucets, no fire protection to speak of. People will have to go to emergency tanks to get a pittance of water.
According to Business Insider:
"If that happens, the only way Capetonians will be allowed to get water from the city will be through a pre-industrial style network of 200 water distribution points. Thousands of people will line p at those taps around the city to collect their allotted 25 liters of water (per person) each day, then haul it home to shower, clean, flush, and do everything else that requires fresh H2O. 'I personally doubt whether it is possible for the city the size of Cape Town to distribute sufficient water to its residents, using its own resources, one the the undergroud water pipe network has been shut down,' Western Cape Premier Helen Zille wrote Monday in the Daily Maverick."
Consider also the logistics of having people go to these water allocation sits, and how, say, a family of four would need to lug 100 liters of water home. (A hundred liters of water weights 220.46 pounds, plus the weight of the container it's in.)
"If every family sends one person to fetch their water allocation, about 5,000 people will congregate at each (water collection station) every day. That creates a logistical nightmare of its own. In addition, it will be impossible for individuals to carry, by hand, 100 liters of water allocated for a family of four every day. So provision will have to be made for transport. The City has not yet given details of how traffic will be managed."
Several factors - some weather and climate related, some not - has led Cape Town to this crisis. The city with its Mediterranean climate depends upon winter rains, when they normally get three or four inches of rain per month in June, July and August.
The winter rains have failed Cape Town in recent years. On top of that, there's been a long term downward trend in winter rain amounts in this area, likely due to climate change. Also, the long term trend in Cape Town has been in favor of rising temperatures, also a climate change symptom. Hotter weather increases evaporation and demand for water, which doesn't help Cape Town at all.
It's late summer in Cape Town now - the dry season. It won't rain anytime soon. Normally it starts to rain in May or so as South Africa enters winter, but it's anyone's guess whether this winter will be dry or wet.
They're trying to save water in Cape Town, but so far, it's not enough.
Of course, if Day Zero arrives and Cape Town runs out of water, you have to worry about civil unrest. According to Business Insider:
"Premier Zille has asked President Jacob Zuma top declare a national disaster for the city, since Cape Town may need more police and military personnel if Day Zero arrives to 'defend storage facilities' ad deal with disease outbreaks as sanitation worsens. She also said officials hope to store some emergency water at military bases 'for safety' Cape Town officials say efforts to get people to cut back on their water usage haven't been working. The city has been urging every resident to consume less than 50 liters of municipal water a day, and to collect what they use when showering and han washing and re-use the 'grey water' to flush toilets and water plants."
So Cape Town really is careering toward a disaster.
I can imagine the staggering economic effects this would have on Cape Town, and to a just slightly lesser extent the whole of South Africa.
Cape Town is South Africa's second largest city so imagine how commerce would grind to a halt with no water. Factories can't run. Offices would be crippled. And people would waste so much time standing in line for water that they wouldn't have time to work.
Cape Town is also a premier tourist destination. It's a beautiful coastal city with a wonderful climate. (Except for the obvious fact that the winter rains seems to have stopped.)
"The province's economy is supported by two major water intensive sectors: touristm and agriculture. Between them, they employ about 600,000 people who (at a conservative estimate of four persons per household) support almost three million people. One of our major priorities has been to keep them employed. The crisis associatd with large-scale job losses and hunger would greatly exacerbate the catastrophe of dry taps."
Weather and climate crises can also create unpredictable civil unrest. Some studies suggest the devastating Syrian civil war, which pretty much destabilized the whole planet, had some of its roots in climate change. (There were obviously many other factors causing this as well.)
Farmers flocked to cities as unprecedented drought struck Syria, and that helped create unrest, which grew into that civil war.
There's already sign of gloom and panic in and around Cape Town. South Africa's national weather service can't promise the winter rains will come this year either.
Long range forecasts are tricky: Note that in California, few predicted the epic drought breaking rains last winter, and fewer still thought southern California would be so incredibly bone dry so far this winter. Last year, the South African weather service said the area would have a wet winter during the June to August time frame in 2017. That surely didn't happen.
Moreover, people who can afford it are already buying up industrial-size water jugsto store when what looks like the deep, inevitable water crisis hits.
Also, some winter rains are almost inevitable in the next few months, so the period Cape Town is out of water might be relatively short lived. But if the winter rains are lame again, the water won't last long at all. They'll be in this situation again by late this year unless it really rains.
Of course, nobody knows where all this will lead. But to my good friends Denis and Michael in Cape Town, I hope the weather is "miserable"where you live this winter. By miserable, of course I mean very, very rainy.
In those days, coal and polluting fuels heated homes and businesses and basically powered the city.
During one of those famous London fogs, all those pollutants got trapped within the fog, causing a four-day dense cloud of smog that killed an estimated 4,000 people.
London has literally cleaned up its act, and pollution there rarely gets to dangerous levels.
Not so in other cities in the world. Beijing, China is famous for its toxic pollution.
The smog cloud in New Delhi, like most pollution outbreaks is caused by an inversion, which is warm air over the top of cooler air that acts like a lid, preventing pollutants and smoke and such from rising and moving away. So it sits there.
Illegal crop burning at farms surrounding New Delhi, vehicle emissions and construction activity and dust are pouring into the New Delhi air, and the pollutants keep accumulating under this inversion.
The Straights Times says New Delhi is trying to deal with the immediate crisis by reducing the number of cars allowed to be driven on its streets each day, banning commercial trucks unless they're carrying essential commodities, new construction has been stopped and charges for parking cars has quadrupled to force people into public transportation. Schools are shut down.
But that's not really doing the trick. There has been a 20 percent spike in hospitalizations due to heart and lung problems. The amount of microscopic particles in the polluted air is 75 times what the World Health Organization considers safe. Breathing the air is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes per day.
And this pollution attack isn't a one-off. It's happening with increasing frequency in New Delhi and other cities in India and elsewhere in Asia.
And remember how I said London and England's air is cleaner? That's true, but it's still too polluted even there. Of 51 British towns and cities in a WHO database, 44 have too much air pollution,the Independent said.
Meanwhile, in the United States, air quality has also improved since the 1960s and 1970s but still sometimes falls short.
Don't expect even cleaner U.S. air in the coming years. Robert Phalen is an appointee to a Trump White House environmental panel.Phalen has said that"Modern air is a little too clean for optimum health."
He claims that children should be exposed to some dirty air to teach their immunie systems to ward off irritants, or something like that.
Hope you love breathing microscopic, toxic particles, folks!
Shines McMorris in the ruins of her Hattiesburg home.
She, her husband and two children were in the house
when a tornado tore it apart, but thankfully, they were
not hurt. Photo by Rogelio Solis/AP
Tornadoes in the South continued last night as expected, but today could very well feature some, huge, very disastrous tornadoes that would make the ones over the past couple of days look like child's play.
A high risk zone for severe weather is rather rare, maybe only happening a couple times a year anywhere in the nation, except in the odd years when tornadoes are unusually frequent.
A high risk zone in January is extremely rare since major tornado outbreaks are rare in the dead of winter. (April through June are the peak months for this sort of thing.)
Some of the tornadoes that break out today in southern Alabama, most anywhere in Georgia, the north half of Florida, and later, in South Carolina and southern North Carolina, could be intense, long lasting and have an incredibly fast forward motion.
This is obviously dangerous for several reasons. The area under alert is fairly highly populated. Cities in the high risk area include Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Gainsville, Florida and Savannah and Albany, Georgia.
A surrounding area of moderate risk, (the second highest alert level) might also get these super intense tornadoes. Some of the ciities in this zone are even more populous ones like Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, Florida, and Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina.
When you're under a tornado warning, the safest place to be is in the basement, or if you don't have a basement, a first floor, interior room with no windows, like a bathroom or closet.
A dorm room at William Carey University trashed
by a tornado Saturday morning. Photo by Rogelio Solia/AP
For most tornadoes, you're safe if go to these places. But you're not necessarily safe in super intense tornadoes as homes would be completely leveled and things could actually be sucked out of basements.
Also, if a tornado is moving along at a very fast forward speed, as many of today's tornadoes will likely do, people won't have a lot of time to take shelter.
As noted yesterday, four people died in and around Hattiesburg, Mississippi as a strong early morning tornado tore through that region.
The Associated Press just had a breaking news alert that 11 people had died and 23 were injured this morning in central and southern Georgia tornadoes.
Many houses are in ruins. A church in Petal, Mississippi was destroyed two years after another tornado did the same.
As of 9 a.m. Sunday, tornado warnings were still up southern Georgia as a nasty band of supercell thunderstorms moved through. The Georgia storms are the second round of severe weather that developed with this storm system.
The first was the Saturday morning and afternoon round that caused the Hattiesburg tornado and spread damage from Louisiana to Georgia.
The second band, over south Georgia and northern Florida this Sunday morning, originated in east Texas and dropped tornadoes and severe weather from Texas, through the Gulf Coast states to Florida.
The third and most potentially most dangerous band, which I've already discussed, will fire up in southern Alabama and the Florida panhandle later this morning and spread northeastward into Georgia and the rest of northern Florida into the Carolinas. (There were signs this was already starting to happen as of 9 a.m. Sunday)
The severe weather will move off the coast tonight as the parent storm system will consolidate into a nor'easter and move up the coast.
While the effects of the storm won't be nearly as dire in the Northeast as they are in the Southeast, high wind warnings and flood watches are already up for parts of coastal New England for Monday as the storm heads in that direction.
Here's some videos:
Damage in Petal, Mississippi
Operation Chase filmed a large tornado and very big, damaging hail late Saturday afternoon near Vivian, Louisiana, close to the Texas border:
Here's drone footage of Hattiesburg by Sam McAlister. It includes views of severe damage to William Carey University:
Apartment buildings teetering on the edge of eroding
cliffs this week in Pacifica, California.
Photo y Leah Millis, San Francisco Chronicle.
A series of winter storms coming off the Pacific Ocean is about to sent some Califrnia apartment buildings and houses plunging off eroding cliffs into the sea, it appears.
The trouble is happening in and around the coastal community of Pacifica, where delicate sand and sandstone cliffs are rapidly eroding as the series of storms brings pounding waves to the coastline.
You'll see a video at the bottom of this post the cliffs eroding before your eyes, and you'll see just how doomed the buildings are.
While most have left, others vow to stay. Which is risky in terms of buildings falling into the water. And more immediately risky because police might arrest people who stay out of concern for their safety.
The California drought of the past four years had at least one bright spot in Pacifica: The lack of winter storms from 2011 to 2015 meant the erosion slowed dramatically.
It even gave a chance for regional officials to try to save some of the buildings by piling huge rocks at the base of the cliffs and re-enforcing them with concrete.
But you can't stop the power of the oceans.
Another view of the endangered buildings in Pacifica, California
Photo by Leah Millis, San Francisco Chronicle.
This year, a series of winter storms, fueled in part by El Nino, have been repeatedly slamming into mostly central and northern California.
The storms have made the cliffs erode rapidly again. The city declared a state of emergency in the past few days after a series of cliff collapses over the weekend.
The last couple of times there was a strong El Nino, like the one we're having this year, the worst storms to hit the California coast came in February and March, so you can see how this is going to be a long couple of months in Pacifica.
Here's that striking video of the erosion in Pacifica with the cliffs collapsing, taken via drone on Saturday:
Building collapsing amid the floods in Columbia, South Carolina. From WITK-TV.
The South Carolina flood disaster that began really unfolding yesterday went from dangerous to catastrophic overight. This is one extreme weather event, and it's extremely dangerous.
At least four people have died in this disaster, and I expect the death toll to rise, unfortunately.
Since yesterday a fire hose like stream of heavy rain slammed into South Carolina from the Atlantic Ocean. It was bad enough all day Saturday, but last night this "fire hose" intensified, and as of 8:30 this Sunday morning was going full steam.
Rainfall has been incredible. Even more incredible than the 20 inches a lot of us expected ahead of this storm.
Standed motorist in South Carolina. From television station WITK
When I give these storm totals remember that it was still raining hard at the time of these measurements.
A place called Boone Hill Plantation northeast of Charleston, South Carolina had received a storm total of 24.23 inches of rain. (I've seen whole years where I live in Vermont with that much rain.)
Another town called Shadowmoss, South Carolina has reported 22.47 inches of rain.
Charleston itself had 14.45 inches at last report early this morning and nearby Mount Pleasant was up to 15.6 inches. And again the rain was still pouring down when these reports came in.
The National Weather Service in Charleston, South Carolina has had widespread reports of 9 to 14 inches of rain and another 6 to 12 inches is expected today. Forecasters there said some areas would get storm totals in excess of 25 inches.
This exceeds the benchmark for extreme rain in the Carolinas, which was set in 1999, when Hurricane Floyd deposited up to 24 inches of rain on North Carolina.
Frustratingly, a lot of water rescues in South Carolina have involved people who tried to drive across flooded roads. One report last night had 300 water rescues in Charleston County in a couple hours, and most of those were from flooded cars on roads.
Parts of major highways like Interstate 95, Interstate 77 and Interstate 20 in South Carolina are closed. Traffic cams show cars submerged in water in these highways.
Authorites try to rescue stranded motorists near Columbia, South Carolina. From WITK television.
I get it that maybe a few of these motorists were surprised by rapidly rising water on roads that seconds before hadn't been submerged.
But so many took their chances in trying to drive across flooded roads, which means resources have to be brought in to get them out of trouble.
In a disaster like this, motorists who drive into flooded roads are like the rest of the storm debris: They're in the way and have to be moved.
The closure of Interstate 95 has implications all up and down the East Coast, not only in South Carolina.
That's because Interstate 95 is the major throroughfare for truck traffic and any other kind of traffic up and down the East Coast.
Near Columbia, South Carolina today.Via Twitter from @TimMillerSC
It's interesting and horrifying to watch this disaster unfold on Twitter. People don't know what to do in such an extreme disaster. I remember this feeling when Tropical Storm Irene trashed my home state of Vermont with catastrophic flooding in 2011.
For a taste, on my Twitter feed I saw this:
SCEMD (which is South Carolina Emergency Management:) "Stay. Where. You. Are. Dangerous flooding condiions through the state most of the day." RK: "Wish you could get this to some employers in Charleston." Harding Brumby: "Stuck on I-95 near Alcolu. Staying put, but what is the plan for the many motorists who can't get off the road?"
Water rescue in Columbia South Carolina. From WISTV.com
Then there was this other exchange of Twitter:
News 19 WLTK "Water rescues happening now at Decker Blvd. Camera crew is there live on air." Kerry Stubbs: "@WLTK Please tell rescuers in the area there's a white Toyota Tacoma washed off Shorebrook near the dam. He is up against a pine tree." Kerry Stubbs "@WLTK: My husband Ty Bohela has no lights or horn on stranded Toyota Tacoma. Can someone find him with GPS from his cell, 803-360-5588?"
As I said this downpour in South Carolina is going to continue all day. A stalled storm system along the Southeast coast is bringing in a band of horrific rains that has held basically in place since Saturday, targeting South Carolina.
Flooded home near Columbia, South Carolina today Photo from Lisa Dye.
Atmospheric Rivers are not a newly christened name for a weather phenomenon. Meteorologists have studied them for decades.
They're usually creatures of the West Coast, when a relatively narrow band of air that taps into tropical moisture, and strong upper level winds aim the very wet air at a specific region, dumping feet of rain. In California, this is often referred to as the Pineapple Express.
As we know, atmospheric rivers don't have to come into the West Coast. An extreme 2010 flood around Nashville, Tennessee was largely borne from an atmospheric river. And this South Carolina flood is too.
As of this morning Joaquin was finally starting to move north away from the Bahamas, after crushing many of those islands with winds of over 100 mph for two days.
There's a lot of damage down there no doubt from wind, storm surges and flooding.
Certainly a big, sad disaster for the Bahamas.
At least now we know where Joaquin is going, which fortunately out to sea well east of the United States. Because we have enough of our own problems with weather in the good ol' U.S of A anyway.
Unlike Joaquin, what has been consistent for days now has been the forecasts for epic flooding in the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic states.
That forecast of terrible flooding sure was coming true this morning.
Widespread flash flood and flood warnings were in effect for the Carolinas early this morning and the rain continued to pour down intensely. Things will undoubtedly worsen as the day goes on today.
(Charleston residents probably knew this would get bad, not only because of the warnings before the storm, but also because The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore showed up in town. When he's around, you know the weather is going to get very, very bad.)
There have already been reports of over ten inches of rain in the Carolinas. Forecasts continue to say more than 20 inches could fall in some spots. Other forecasts call for a foot of rain in parts of South Carolina just today.
Television station WLTX in Columbia, South Carolina said residents in much of the area around that state are bracing for the worst flooding in at least 125 years. Gov. Nikki Haley is among several governors who have declared states of emergency.
Haley is already urging people to leave low lying areas, and is also telling people to pretty much not drive anywhere this weekend.
Overnight and this morning, the storm system in the Southeast was siphoning moisture straight from Hurricane Joaquin and spraying it as if it were a giant fire house into South Carolina and on into central North Carolina.
The deep tropical moisture and the storm system will linger in the Southeast all weekend so these heavy rains will continue.
A house in Bermuda was swept away
by Hurricane Joaquin.
Further north into Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, it won't rain as hard as it will in the Carolinas, but the problem there will be coastal flooding.
The contrast between strong high pressure over Quebec and low pressure over the Southeast will continue the strong east winds that are pushing water into the coast.
Usually, when there's a coastal flood on the East Coast, it's usually maybe just two high tide cycles that cause the problem.
But this is lasting FOREVER. It started in earnest yesterday, and each high tide through the weekend will bring flooding. The repeated battering from the Atlantic Ocean will cause massive beach erosion. And the repeated high water with each tide cycle is going to cause more and more damage to shoreline buildings and roads.
So this is really a disastrous weekend. Things should get better for everyone early next week, but the extreme damage will have been done.
Some people have asked if global warming is causing all this extreme weather. Those kinds of questions always pop up in big storms, and that's a good thing.
The best I can do is speculate that global warming might, just might have had an influence, but obviously wasn't the sole cause of all this trouble.
Let's break it down:
Hurricane Joaquin was stronger than forecast, having fed off record high water temperatures near Bermuda. The record high ocean temperatures are consistent with global warming, so there's that. Maybe Joaquin was stronger than it would have otherwise been without climate change.
However, there have been hurricanes this strong in the region in the past.
The epic flooding in the Southeast is also consistent with global warming, in that precipitation events are likely to become more extreme as the climate changes. Again, I won't say climate change is causing the flood disaster in the Southeast, but there's a chance it contributed.
In terms of the coastal flooding further north, I have no idea if the high tides themselves were influenced by climate change. But sea levels have been rising as ice caps melt, so if the sea level is a bit higher to begin with, then the coastal flooding we're getting now is probably worse than it would have been under similar weather patterns decades ago.
A hippo that excaped from a zoo during
an extreme flood in Tbilisi, Georgia this
week stands in the water in the city's downtown.
In this year of catastrophic floods that seems to be happening with alarming frequency around the globe, another really bad one hit Tibilisi, the capital of the country of Georgia.
The city, home to 1.1 million people or so, was battered by extreme rains and extreme floods that killed at least 10 people in the past couple of days.
The entire city is also on lockdown, because the flood swept through the Tibilis Zoo, freeing all kinds of dangerous animals.
Among the animals that escaped are eight bears, 20 wolves, eight lions, white tigers, jackals and jaguars,according to the Daily Mail.
Video and photos show people trying to corral a large hippo in devastated downtown Tbilisi. Another photo shows a bear stranded on an apartment building air conditioning unit by the flooding.
An escaped bear clings to a second floor
air conditioning unit at a flood-wrecked
apartment block in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Sadly, many of the animals died in the flooding. Only three of the zoo's 17 penguins survived.
(Warning: The link to the Daily Mail includes very heartrending photos of lions and tigers and other animals killed by the flooding) Other animals had to be shot, city officials reported, because they were menacing people.
At last report, it was unclear whether all the surviving animals that had escaped had been found.
The flooding also destroyed dozens of homes and many people have been left homeless.
The devastation came after extremely torrential rains fell on the area, turning a small river into a huge torrent that swept through much of Tbilisi and surrounding areas.
This video shows chaos and rescues in Tbilisi amid the flash flood:
The next video shows animals loose on the streets of Tbilisi, and destruction to the city:
