Energy

Hurricane Florence Dumped 13 TRILLION Gallons Of Rain On The Carolinas, Virginia

REUTERS/Jason Miczek

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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Hurricane Florence dumped record amounts of rainfall over the Carolinas over the last five days, covering the states in about 11 trillion gallons of rain.

Add in rainfall Florence dumped in Virginia, however, and the total precipitation from the slow-moving storm reaches nearly 13 trillion gallons between Thursday and Tuesday, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue.

Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in North Carolina on Thursday. The storm then moved slowly through North and South Carolina before turning northward. The remnants of Florence hovered over New England as of Tuesday morning.

Florence dumped a maximum of 34 inches on North Carolina and nearly 24 inches on South Carolina, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Those are the highest state rainfall totals from a cyclone going back to 1950.

However, Maue noted that Hurricane Floyd in 1999 dumped nearly twice as much rain as Florence. Floyd dropped 21 trillion gallons of rainfall up and down the U.S. East Coast. (RELATED: Hurricane Florence’s Price Tag? $30 Billion, According To One Estimate)

That doesn’t mean the Carolinas made it through Florence unscathed. On the contrary, massive amounts of flooding occurred in the states due to storm surge and rivers overflowing from the rain.

More than half a million people were left without power as the storm passed, and hundreds of residents who did not evacuate ahead of the storm had to be pulled out of cars and off roofs by rescue teams.

At least 17 people died in the storm, including a 3-month-old infant who died when a tree crashed through a mobile home.

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