Tropical rainstorm could stall over the Carolinas for days

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Alex DaSilva says the tropical rainstorm over the Carolinas could stall over the region for days, dumping flood-inducing heavy rain, stirring storm surge and even spawning tornadoes.

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00:00Hurricane hunters have tried, several different people have tried, and what's the verdict now, Alex?

00:05Yeah, still struggling to find that center of circulation. The winds are there. We just took a

00:09look there at the Wrightsville Beach live cam there, or the video there. They actually saw

00:14a wind gust with a band of rain that just moved through about an hour ago, 67 miles per hour near

00:19Wrightsville Beach. A wind gust there. And in Wilmington, 59 miles per hour. So the winds are

00:25there. This thing is producing the winds of a tropical storm. It's just we do not have the

00:30center of circulation. A defined center is the piece that we're missing right now.

00:35And without that defined center, it's really hard to take in where the storm will end up going,

00:40but ultimately, you know, vaguely where it will be. Exactly the center, though, is more hard to

00:45define. Speaking of the center, it does look like we have some dry air coming in over parts of South

00:49Carolina on the water vapor imagery. So that's the moisture in the middle levels of where weather is

00:54formed in the atmosphere. Yes, certainly this doesn't have that classic look of a tropical

00:58system right now. You see a lot of the moisture, but it's on the northern side of the circulation

01:03south of where the center of circulation is located. You see all of that gold and brown air

01:08coming in. That's dry air coming in from the from the mainland United States there. And so

01:13that's essentially drying out the southern portion of the storm. And so on radar, we actually don't

01:18see a whole lot of rain on the southern side of the storm. And that's essentially what's

01:22preventing this from really wrapping up quickly. Again, you can see all the rain

01:26located mostly on the northern portion of the circulation down south of Myrtle Beach,

01:32not doing a whole lot right now. But that heavy rain up near Wrightsville Beach,

01:36that's where we saw that wind gust of almost 70 miles per hour.

01:39Yeah, there's wind gusts of very strong there, obviously. And one of the factors along with the

01:44rain, there's also some factor of storm surge in this system. Yeah, that's been the concern of

01:51mine for a while here is we're going to have quite a long push of onshore flow, multiple high

01:56tide cycles where we're going to have this wind coming from the east, just shoving this water

02:01inland. We've already seen multiple reports of flooding, inland flooding from this storm surge.

02:06And unfortunately, that's going to continue certainly until after the storm makes landfall

02:10later on today. And with all that water coming in, storm drains have nowhere to put the water

02:15from the rain that's coming into, which can intensify as tropical moisture forms. And the

02:21reason why we are even considering this as tropical is because of the warm water it's over.

02:26Yeah, it's over what we call the Gulf Stream, a warm water current essentially that moves along

02:30the southeastern coast of the United States. And right along that Gulf Stream is water temperatures

02:35in the mid 80s. So it could give us this enough fuel right before it makes landfall here later

02:39this afternoon to develop into either a tropical or subtropical storm. And that's what we do have

02:45as some sort of either subtropical or tropical storm making that landfall this evening.

02:49What else can you tell us about the I-PATH? Yeah, and then after that, it's going to spread

02:53the rainfall inland. So it's not only a threat at the coast, we're going to have to watch

02:57areas well inland for heavy rain and also keep an eye out for tropical tornadoes. Again,

03:02we look to the south and east of where the center of circulation is for those tropical tornadoes.

03:07All right, great tips there from AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva. Thank you

03:11for joining us.

03:14you

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