ROCHESTER, N.Y. – With any tropical storm or hurricane meteorologists will watch for many different types of threats. This can include wind, storm surge, tornadoes, or even freshwater flooding. So what was the big weather issue with Hurricane Debby? We know that Debby came ashore as a category one storm with winds near 80 miles per hour. The strong winds will certainly cause power outages, but a bigger concern with this hurricane is the amount of freshwater flooding. The west coast of Florida has already been pounded with heavy rain. Doppler radar estimates show this heavy rain caused extensive flooding from the north and south of the City of Tampa. Sarasota (60 miles to the south) has measured upwards of 15 inches of rain and near New Port Richey (40 miles to the north) there has been over 13 inches. Keep in mind, this intense rainfall happened over a very short amount of time. That is the equivalent of more than three months’ worth of rainfall in less than 24 hours for us in Rochester!

Debby is not done yet as this tropical system is now slowing down. A slowing of forward momentum means even more flooding likely with a tremendous amount of rain through eastern Georgia, eastern South Carolina maybe even into North Carolina. Some communities such as Savannah, Ga. could see 10 to 20 inches of rain.  We hope this does not come to fruition, but this could be some of the worst flooding since Hurricane Florence back in  2018.