Rain, plenty of it and we got it where we needed it. I Mike Davis talking with Corey Davis from the state climate office of North Carolina. And oh boy, earlier this week, we really saw El Nino at its finest didn’t we? We really got a major system that came through and I understand that not only did we get lots of rain quarry, but the places that were perhaps the driest and in most need, that’s where they got the heaviest.
That’s right, Mike. And that’s really the good news from the event that moved through on Monday night and Tuesday. The rainfall totals across the Carolinas were at least an inch across the western half of the state. We saw at least two inches and then some areas especially in the southern mountains. In North Carolina and the upstate of South Carolina, so four or five inches from this event. So even though this is not their first big rain of the winter so far, this is definitely the biggest one that they’ve seen. And we have seen some really positive improvements both on the drought map this week, which doesn’t even include all of the rain that fell it only includes the rain through 7am On Tuesday, but also just in terms of impacts. One of the main areas we’ve been waiting for recovery is with the deeper groundwater levels. And just over the last couple of days since that moisture has had a chance to trickle down through the system we’ve seen a lot of these groundwater levels in western North Carolina, now rising back up above normal in some areas. This is the first time since last summer that they’ve been above normal with the groundwater conditions.
It came in it was sort of quiet to begin with, I thought this seems to be blown out of proportion and then as the day went along, boy the worst that it got here in the Raleigh area and and that just continued all night long.
Yeah, literally blown into proportion as we headed on into the evening. I know I talked with some folks from the Raleigh National Weather Service office earlier this week. They said they had 13 forecasters on duty for that event, just to cover the entire central part of the state as that line was moving through. Of course another part of their responsibility is monitoring other river levels and we had a pretty decent rain event half an inch to an inch last weekend. So with this additional rain up to two inches falling on top of that things are already saturated. We saw a lot of that moisture runoff into the rivers. And we’ve seen some of those rivers across the Carolinas reach minor to moderate flood stage over the last few days. Those river levels will subside a little bit here over the next couple of days but we’re looking at a little more rain falling on top of that beginning later this afternoon.