Steve Homed, a veteran meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says Hurricane Floyd is an icon for the dangers of 

 inland flooding associated with tropical storms. • Hurricane Floyd — among a cluster oj 'fiurricanes that targeted North Carolina in the 1990s 

 — left a trail of destruction five years ago. 



"The day before Floyd made landfall at 

 Cape Fear, dry air circulated to the south side of 

 Floyd, choking down its power from a Category 

 4 to a Category 2. But, it had a long way to go to 

 wind down, and its tank was full," Harned con- 

 tinues. "We knew when it hit, something terrible 

 would come of it." 



Before the first band of rain pelted North 

 Carolina, the Raleigh NWS office and the NWS 

 River Forecast Center in Atlanta issued flood 

 warnings. "We were advising county managers 

 and emergency management officials to be 

 proactive and move people out of harm's way." 



Hundreds evacuated to high ground. Those 

 who chose to ride out the downgraded storm 

 didn't understand that a Category 2 still is a 

 dangerous storm, Harned says. 



At 2:30 am on Sept. 16, Floyd came ashore 

 near Topsail Beach with sustained winds near 100 

 mph, gusts up to 1 22 mph, and a 10-foot storm 

 surge. The oceanfront took the first losses in terms 

 of beach erosion, structure damage and dune loss. 



But much of Floyd's impact was yet to be 

 felt. Rain — torrential rain — inundated low-lying 

 communities across the coastal plain all the way to 

 Interstate 95. Wilmington, alone, measured nearly 

 20 inches of rain in a 12-hour period. 



Extreme amounts of rain continued to fall 

 through the day as the hurricane tracked over 

 North Carolina and Virginia In less than 24 hours, 

 North Carolinians began reeling from Floyd's 

 watery blow. 



A centennial 



'We had forecast a 100-year flood event," 

 Harned says. "But for some areas of North Caro- 

 lina, it was a 500-year flood event." 



Floyd could not have come at a worse 

 time for North Carolina he points out. Earlier 

 in September, Hurricane Dennis — the summer 

 drought breaker — dumped heavy rains from the 

 coast to the Piedmont. Dennis saturated the land, 

 pushed water tables higher all across the state, 

 filled rivers, tributaries and sounds to flood levels 

 — and set the stage for the disastrous visit by 

 Hurricane Floyd. 



"When Floyd came ashore, it became a 

 rain machine over the coastal plain. The rivers 

 and sounds already were full, and the water had 

 nowhere to go," Harned explains. 



'When the weather cleared after Floyd, 

 we rented a plane to assess the extent of the storm. 

 As Wilson came into view, it took my breath 

 away. The Tar River, which crested 24 feet above 

 flood stage, was four or five miles wide and 

 moving on a sheet downhill toward Greenville." 



He called the NWS Atlanta River Flood 

 Center, reporting the scene with disbelief. "Get 

 this into a model," he told colleagues. 



"It was daunting to calculate the impact on 

 the people and the environment by such a major 

 weather event," he says. 



There's frustration in Harned's voice when 



he recounts one hard lesson learned from Hurricane 

 Floyd: 'We learned that we have excellent, on-target 

 forecasting capabilities, but we had antiquated 

 methods of getting out the message that inland 

 flooding is a serious threat." 



New forecasting 



Since Floyd, Harned has partnered with 

 several NOAA agencies, the Federal Emergency 

 Management Administration (FEMA), the state 

 of North Carolina and the U.S. Geological Survey 

 (USGS) to develop a more effective means of 

 delivering flood warning information to the 

 public, emergency management leaders and other 

 government officials. 



A collaborative demonstration project, under 

 the umbrella of the NWS Advanced Hydrologic 

 Prediction Service initiative, models the Tar River 

 basin. The pilot project combines data from USGS 

 stream gauging stations with the rain estimates to 

 forecast flood potential. The information is shown 

 graphically on an animated river map that can be 

 accessed online at www.csc.noaa.gov/ncflood. 



This new approach, which was successfully 

 tested when Hurricane Isabel came ashore in 2003, 

 holds enormous promise for emergency managers, 

 Harned says. 



Other new technologies are now in place along 

 North Carolina's coast to enhance NWS meteorolo- 

 gists' predictive powers — and ultimately save lives. 



18 AUTUMN 2004 



