Tropical storm batters East Coast with flooding, high winds

AccuWeather

A tropical storm brought coastal flooding, beach erosion and wind gusts over 40 mph to the East Coast, prompting flash flood warnings and water rescues.

Transcript

00:00Take a live look at Virginia Beach. This is courtesy of Leslie Hudson and yeah you can see

00:05the beach is pretty angry down here in this region as well Melissa. Yeah it's not an easy

00:09go of things. They have kind of worked through that beach to kind of navigate some of the ongoing

00:13tidal flooding concerns here and so far so good in Virginia Beach. People have been staying home

00:20as we've been checking in on them and you can see just how many swells are coming in even with a

00:25little bit of sunlight out there in the water. Part of the reason why we've been covering this

00:30storm so much is because of how it's interacting with some of the other weather patterns around

00:35the northeast. There is a low pressure system that's been diving through the Great Lakes and

00:40over the northeast so that's going to all tie into this storm in the course of time. However we also

00:46have the strong high. This high by the way is what brought the cool dry air mass that was so crisp

00:51and bright for many of us across the northeast. That October air is shifting its way out over

00:56Atlantic Canada but doesn't allow the storm to lift very quickly on the coast. It also forces a

01:01tighter change in pressure. That's what we call pressure gradient which is going to drive those

01:06winds and in this case they're going to be pushed in towards the coastline. We already have those wind

01:11gusts of more than 30 to 40 miles per hour. Atlantic City you've gusted to more than 40 as has Ocean City

01:16Maryland and into Virginia. Coastal Virginia you can see 46 miles per hour there and we continue to

01:24watch the rain lift northward too. Allie was dealing with some bands of rain coming in. A lot of this

01:29rain will be confined pretty well to the coast so we might not see it traverse as far into inter

01:34Pennsylvania and some of our inter interior northeastern areas but we are still getting some

01:40of the rainfall. Where it is heaviest working its way into South Jersey at this point in time and through

01:44the Delmarva. Along with that you do have those strong winds and the rough surf. Farther south this

01:51is where flooding has been a huge factor here due to some of the rain on top of coastal flooding.

01:57Around the Georgetown area there is currently a flash flood warning in place. I did want to highlight

02:02here what they've been dealing with and let me take off some of the old ones but basically we've been

02:08dealing with flooding reports around the Georgetown area that have been fairly substantial including some

02:13water rescues too and notable flooding there in Georgetown region. So this is one of our big spots

02:20where we've gotten a lot of the storm reports coming in from this area and they have indeed topped now more than

02:26six inches of rainfall there as well as Andrews, South Carolina which is interior a little bit more

02:32away from the coastline. You can see why the rainfall is a concern there in South Carolina. That continues

02:37through a lot of today that low sitting and spinning as this whole storm system stretches out. So that second

02:42impulse or the first impulse I should say moves up the coast. The second low continues to sit and spin

02:47and that's what takes the time to move up the coastline here allowing for the winds all the

02:52while to be a factor. That's why we've been highlighting this risk for the tropical wind and rainstorm.

02:59It's on a one at the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale for hurricanes because of the amount of coastal

03:04flooding and beach erosion that it will do to the east coast.

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