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Rains not seen for 200 YEARS: Two dead, 22 million on flood watch and New Jersey homes already consumed by high tides in bombardment of weekend storms dubbed a 'slow-motion disaster'
- National Weather Service spokesman called the storms hitting the East Coast a 'once-in-200-years rainfall event'
- Around 22 million Americans are on 'flood watch' on the East Coast
- Rains closed roads, waterlogged crops and showed little sign of letting up
- Parts of North and South Carolina have had more than a foot of rain
- More than 15 inches of rain have fallen in Myrtle Beach, SC, since Friday
- The Greenville-Spartanburg Airport in South Carolina recorded 2.3 inches of rain Saturday, smashing the previous record of 0.77 inches from 1961
- Two deaths in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina have been linked to the storms
- One woman was hit by a falling tree while another drowned in her car
- Flood watches and warnings also are in effect in Delaware and parts of New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia
- The search continues for 33 crew - 28 Americans and five Poles - on board a ship that went missing near the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin
- Joaquin regained potentially catastrophic Category 4 status Saturday and is speeding up as it moves away from Bahamas but is expected to pass US
Published: 08:56 EST, 3 October 2015 | Updated: 19:23 EST, 3 October 2015
A record-setting 'once-in-200-years rainfall event' left 22 million Americans on the East Coast on flood watch as rains have closed down roads, waterlogged crops and showed little sign of stopping.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue of Weather Bell Analytics told NBC New York: 'It's going to be a slow-motion disaster'.
North and South Carolina have been hit the worst, with up to 12 inches of rain falling in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Friday night alone, and two deaths have been reported so far in the states.
President Barack Obama issued a state of emergency in South Carolina on Saturday and state emergency officials said flash flood warnings were issued for numerous counties and that some homes had already been evacuated, including in the coastal county that includes Myrtle Beach.
More than 15 inches of rain have fallen over the popular beach area since Friday, with more expected, the National Weather Service in Wilmington, North Carolina, reported.
South Carolina could get more rain in three days than it normally gets during the entire fall.
Sylvia Arteaga, 56, drowned when her car flooded in standing water on a road in Spartanburg, South Carolina. County coroner Rusty Clevenger told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal that she was likely unable to escape the car when it became submerged.
'This one is extraordinary in that it's such a prolonged event,' he said.
Downtown Charleston was closed to incoming traffic Saturday as rain washed out some bridges, flooded roads and left some motorists stranded as flood waters engulfed their cars.
'Where we normally are dealing with flooding for a few hours, we're dealing with it in days here,' Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen told The Associated Press.
'We're seeing areas flood today that did not traditionally flood.'
In North Carolina, Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler says farmers are starting to see the impact of the continuous rain on their crops.
Apples in Henderson County are starting to split open because they're waterlogged and farmers can't get into the fields to harvest other crops.
'I had one farmer tell me this is like getting all of your cash assets, put them on a clothesline, waiting for the wind to blow them away,' he said.
Flooded roads were closed throughout the mid-Atlantic region and power companies reported scattered outages in several states.
Flood watches and warnings also are in effect in Delaware and parts of New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia and it looks as though there will be no reprieve from the combination of northeastern storms and tropical moisture until Monday.
Nearby residents posted on social media that the 2.5-story house was lifted up off its foundation and floated into an inlet.
Down south in Virginia, Bubba's Seafood restaurant in Virginia Beach was so overwhelmed with water that dolphins were swimming at its doors.
NWS meteorologist Doug Anderson told Daily Mail Online that Hurricane Joaquin is 'slow moving' and he is 'expecting it to last through Monday night'.
The weather service issued a warning for residents living along the coast to be alert for rising water.
A combination of high water and high waves could result in beach erosion and damage to docks and piers.
This forecast by the National Hurricane Center predicts the path of Hurricane Joaquin (shown in white) in the coming days. It predicts that after Tuesday morning, the threat will be over and the storm will move out to sea
Once the rain ends, dangerous flooding triggered by the heavy rainfall is expected across much of the Carolinas and parts of Georgia, Virginia and New Jersey over weekend, US forecasters said.
'These kind of prolific rainfalls are not unprecedented, but this is definitely one for the history books,' said NWS forecaster Dave Loewenthal in Wilmington.
'We have had numerous reports of road closures.
'We have had roads washed out, sinkholes forming,' he said. 'It's really a mess and we are going to have significantly more problems with multiple rivers reaching moderate flood (level) or higher.'
A statement from the North Carolina governor's office said up to 500 residents of Brunswick County had been evacuated from their homes Friday night into early Saturday morning due to flooding from heavy rains and a levee failure in South Carolina.
'It's definitely a life-threatening situation,' said NWS meteorologist Steve Pfaff.
'There were people that were stuck in vehicles that were flooded and water in some of the homes was up over the electrical outlets,' he said.
It was not clear whether the deaths of four people in a small plane crash Friday near Lake Hartwell, South Carolina, was weather related.
Official advisories in Charleston, South Carolina, told residents to stay indoors and out of knee-deep water.
'I'm a good citizen and I'm going to obey,' Shirley Jones told CNN. 'I'm going to hole up in my apartment and clean out my dresser.'
The National Weather Service told NBC that South Carolina is facing a 'once-in-200-years rainfall event'.
'A significant flooding event is developing across southern South Carolina and portions of eastern Georgia,' the NWS said.
'A powerful low-pressure system over the southeast United States will slowly move northeast across the area through Sunday. Accompanying this storm will be several weather hazards, most notably the potential for dangerous flooding from heavy rainfall and high tides.'
Increased threat of landslides and life-threatening rip currents pose as a threat in the Carolinas and up the coast.
'This is not just rain,' South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley told CNN. 'It's going to be the heaviest rain we've ever seen.'
'The touch news for North Carolina and especially South Carolina is continued rain,' North Carolina Gov Pat McCrory added.
'Our state is now likely to miss any direct impact from the hurricane, but there's still significant danger of flooding, high seas, heavy surf, beach erosion and overwash.'
It was centered on Saturday morning about 120 miles northeast of San Salvador, Bahamas, and about 700 miles southwest of Bermuda. It has maximum sustained winds of 125mph and is moving northeast at 13mph.
A hurricane warning is still in effect for parts of the Bahamas. The Bermuda Weather Service has issued a tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch for Bermuda.
Earlier this week, the governors of New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland declared states of emergency and announced measures including mobilization of National Guard troops in preparation for the storm.
Before the first easterly shift in Joaquin's trajectory, New York and New Jersey - where Superstorm Sandy killed more than 120 people and caused $70billion of property damage in October 2012 - both faced potential threats from the storm.
Meanwhile, the fate of 33 crew aboard a cargo ship missing off the Bahamas in heavy seas whipped up by Hurricane Joaquin was unknown on Friday as the storm battered the island chain for a second day.
The 735ft ship, named El Faro, was headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Jacksonville, Florida, when it reported it had lost propulsion and was listing and taking on water, the Coast Guard said.
'We are very surprised that we lost all communication with the ship,' Mike Hanson, a spokesman for El Faro's owner, Tote Maritime Puerto Rico, told Reuters on Saturday.
'The ship was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,' he added, saying Joaquin was just a tropical storm when El Faro set out from Jacksonville but later intensified rapidly into a major hurricane.
Late Friday afternoon, the US National Hurricane Center downgraded Joaquin, the third hurricane of the 2015 Atlantic season, to a Category 3 hurricane on a scale of 1 to 5, down from its previous Category 4 ranking.
By Friday evening, Joaquin's core was beginning to move away from the central Bahamas, the Miami-based center said in an 8pm EDT advisory, adding that hurricane conditions would continue for several more hours.
The Coast Guard said there had been no further communications after the El Faro issued the emergency call at about 7.30am Thursday.
The ship was in the eye of Joaquin about 35 miles north of Crooked Island when it issued the distress call, according to Chief Ryan Doss with the Coast Guard in Miami.
'We have had 20-foot seas reported so it's going to take a while to get into the area,' Doss said.
A Coast Guard cutter headed to help after taking part in a separate rescue mission off Haiti, while two Air Force Hurricane Hunter planes searched in vain for the US-owned El Faro.
'The low cloud cover makes satellite communications difficult,' Doss said, while the winds and high seas made it hard to get close enough by sea or air.
'The storm is so bad and slow moving it's hard for our planes to get low enough to inspect the surface of the water.'
Hanson said the ship was equipped with a marine transponder, a satellite phone and GPS locators on the containers.
'We checked them all,' he said.
The El Faro, built in 1975, recently underwent a complete updating, Hanson said.
Captain Stephen Russell, director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency, said earlier there were no reports of deaths or injuries in the Bahamas from Joaquin.
He cited reports of extensive flooding and structural damage on at least two smaller islands in the archipelago, but apart from some roofs ripped off houses, damage seemed to be limited.
The storm dumped torrential rain over parts of the Bahamas but its hurricane-force winds missed the larger islands and the main cities and cruise ship ports of Freeport and Nassau.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
- Flash Floods, 'Once in 200 Years Rainfall Event' Loom in South Carolina - NBC News
- Home collapses into the bay overnight during high tide near North Wildwood | NJ.com
- Rain, Wind and Coastal Flooding to Lash Eastern U.S. as Hurricane Joaquin Stays Offshore | NBC New York
- Silvia Arteaga of Spartanburg killed as flooding swamps car | GoUpstate.com
- Hurricane Joaquin, 2d storm threaten East Coast records - CNN.com
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