Monday morning, children went to school in Carolina Beach while adults went to work in Brunswick County.
When everyone went to bed Sunday evening, forecasters had been predicting that the storm tagged as Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight would drop three to six inches of rain on the region, with some areas seeing as much as eight inches. That’s a high amount of rain, but not unheard of in storm-prone Southeastern North Carolina.
But by early afternoon historic rainfalls had ended the school day early. And some of those children reached home in flooded Carolina Beach on a military style, high-clearance vehicle. Local news sources like WECT-TV said hundreds of drivers were stranded on Brunswick County roads Monday, unable to use flooded or washed out thoroughfares.
So how did a storm that was forecast to bring 6 inches of rain end up dropping 20.26 inches of rain on Bald Head Island, an amount that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas 14 defines as a storm with a 1-in-500 chance of happening in any given year?