Tropical Storm Debby drenched coastal cities in Georgia and South Carolina, stirred up tornadoes and submerged streets with waist-high floodwaters on Tuesday.
Charleston and Savannah took the first blow, with up to a foot of rain falling along the coast between the two cities in just over 24 hours.
Police blocked all the roads into Charleston’s downtown peninsula as a precaution.
Dozens of roads were closed in the historic city because of flooding similar to what it sees several times a year because of rising sea levels.
As Debby swirls just offshore, the heavy rain is expected to move north into parts of South Carolina and North Carolina that have already seen two billion-dollar floods in eight years.
In one Savannah neighbourhood, firefighters used boats on Tuesday afternoon to evacuate some residents and waded in waist-deep in floodwaters to deliver bottled water and supplies to others who refused to leave.
Officials in Charleston continued a curfew, closing all roads into the downtown peninsula and letting only essential workers and emergency personnel pass through.
Mayor William Cogswell said the move meant the city had not had to do any high water rescues and kept businesses and homes from unnecessary damage.
South Carolina governor Henry McMaster said Debby has not yet been as bad as feared, but he warned residents the slow-moving storm was far from over.
It will be a nervous few days for northern South Carolina and southern North Carolina where forecasters warned up to 15 inches of rain could fall, totals close to what the region saw in a historic flood from Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Then, two years later, rains and flooding from Hurricane Florence broke many of those records. Both storms killed dozens.
Debby’s centre was 10 miles east of Savannah, the National Hurricane Centre said in its 5pm advisory on Tuesday.
It was moving east-northeast at just 3mph and right along the coastline near Georgia’s Tybee Island.
The storm was expected to slowly move out to sea, then reverse and creep back onshore on Thursday near Charleston.
“Tropical cyclones always produce heavy rain, but normally as they’re moving, you know, it doesn’t accumulate that much in one place,” Richard Pasch of the Hurricane Centre said.
“But when they move very slowly, that’s the worst situation.”
Close to a foot of rain was reported down the coast from Charleston to Savannah, where the National Weather Service reported 6.68 inches of rainfall just on Monday, a month’s worth of rain in a single day.
Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early on Monday along the Gulf Coast of Florida. At least five people have died due to the storm, either in traffic accidents or from fallen trees.
More than 155,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Tuesday morning, down from more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp. More than 20,000 others were without power in South Carolina early on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations making federal disaster assistance available to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Debby is finally expected to pick up speed on Thursday. The Hurricane Centre predicts the system could move up the middle of North Carolina, through Virginia and into the Washington DC area by Saturday.
