‘Life-Threatening’ Floods Shown in Video as Storm Makes Landfall

“Life-threatening” floods caused by Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight were caught on video on Monday as the storm made landfall near the North Carolina-South Carolina state line.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) began issuing advisories about the storm on Sunday, which was churning off the United States’ Southeastern coast at the time and warned of its “life-threatening” flash flooding impact in a social media post on Monday. Meteorologists tracked the storm, which had a high chance of forming into Tropical Storm Helene, the eighth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. However, although the storm reached tropical storm strength, it never attained the necessary structure to be classified as a tropical storm, Dan Brown, the branch chief of the NHC’s hurricane specialist unit, told Newsweek.
Despite never being labeled as a tropical storm, the storm is bringing no small manner of threats to North Carolina where video footage revealed the extent of flash flooding that occurred in Carolina Beach in the southeastern part of the state.
“Wild #flashflood ongoing in #carolinabeach and around SE #NorthCarolina,” documentarian Jonathan Petramala posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday. Included in his post was a video of widespread flooding covering the town.
The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Wilmington, North Carolina, also commented on the severity of the floodwaters.
“Roads are flooded at least 3 feet deep in parts of Carolina Beach,” NWS Wilmington posted to X, with a photo that showed floodwaters rising halfway up a van. “No cars or trucks are designed to safely travel in floodwater this deep. Please stay off the roads.”
Upwards of 12 inches of rain fell in the Carolina Beach area, which is “extremely unusual,” NWS meteorologist Tim Armstrong told Newsweek. The storm is now threatening heavy rainfall between 3 and 6 inches to Brunswick, North Carolina.
Armstrong said it’ll take time for the floodwaters in Carolina Beach to drain, as high tide will occur at 6:30 p.m. local time this evening. However, once high tide passes, he said the floodwaters will drain quickly.
Calm weather is forecast for the next few days, which will aid in clean-up purposes, Armstrong added.
Rainfall is one of the storm’s biggest threats, Brown said, as was the tropical storm-force winds and the threat of tornados.
“Those winds are already decreasing and will continue to decrease as the system moves inland,” Brown said, adding that the threat of locally heavy rainfall will shift into the mid-Atlantic states over the next few days.
As of Monday afternoon, a tropical storm warning, flash flood warning and tornado warning, among numerous other weather-related advisories, were in place for the North Carolina-South Carolina coast.
In addition to Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight, the NHC also is tracking Tropical Depression Gordon.