Video credit - Cody Carpenter

Charleston area flooding, damaging winds reported as Debby pummels region

Tropical Storm Debby, which came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane along the Florida coast early Monday, will move across the Southeast on Tuesday at roughly the speed of a human walking. That slow pace will allow it to deliver historic amounts of rainfall — most likely measured in feet instead of inches — that could lead to catastrophic flooding over the next several days.

Debby is producing so much rain that forecasters believe it will rival or break records in Georgia and South Carolina for the most rain that has ever fallen

More than 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain had fallen through Monday at Savannah’s airport, and showed no signs of stopping Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported. That’s already a month’s worth of rain in a single day: In all of August 2023, the city got 5.56 inches (14.1 centimeters) of rain.

Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah and Charleston, South Carolina, among other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced overnight curfews as the rains picked up. Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday.

More than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain fell between Hilton Head Island and Charleston overnight, radar estimates showed.