Perfect storm led to Monday’s record rain

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The flooding rains of yesterday are now in the past, but it begs the question why did so much rain fall in such a short period of time? It turns out, it was a perfect scenario for flooding.

Be careful what you wish for. After begging for rain for the better part of September, the Cape Fear area got more wet weather than it bargained for Monday. The week began with a heavy-duty rainfall deficit, after being dry for nearly a month.

More than 10 inches of water later the scene across the area included cars stranded, traffic jams, people unable to get to their homes. The near foot of rain proved just too much to handle on area roadways.

An area of low pressure trekking up the east coast draped a cold front just to the west of the area. Out ahead of the front, tropical moisture streamed onshore from the Atlantic Ocean soaking the east coast with rain.

Thunderstorms set up across the area Monday morning, and tracked over the same area again and again. It’s a flooding scenario meteorologists often call training. The end result? The second rainiest day on record in Wilmington, only shy of the floods of Hurricane Floyd back in 1999.

Unfortunately, this is only round one of our week-long flooding threat. More areas of low pressure will track through the area Wednesday and Thursday bringing a similar scenario, which could mean an encore performance of the flooding rains we saw Monday.