PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The weather system previously known as Hurricane Debby was not quite done with parts of the U.S. Sunday as flood warnings remained in effect in North Carolina and thousands were without power in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
After hitting Florida as a hurricane Aug. 5, the storm spent nearly a week unleashing tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and taking lives along the East Coast before moving into Canada on Saturday.
While many rivers had receded by Sunday, flood warnings remained in effect across central and eastern North Carolina, where more thunderstorms were possible over the next few days. With the ground already saturated from Debby, the National Weather Service said localized downpours could result in additional flash flooding throughout the coastal Carolinas.
Authorities in Lumberton, N.C., said in a Facebook post Saturday that one person died after driving into floodwaters on a closed road and getting swept away. Officials didn’t identify the driver, but said that what they hoped would be a post-storm rescue, quickly turned into a recovery.
“It bears repeating,” the agency said in the post. “Never drive into flooded roadways and obey road closed signage.”
In South Carolina, the National Weather Service’s Charleston office warned Sunday that as much as 3 to 4 inches of additional rainfall was possible in the afternoon and evening, and could lead to flash flooding. Showers and thunderstorms could develop across Charleston County down through Chatham County and inland, the office said.
Even in drier areas, more than 48,000 homes and businesses in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont still had no electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us. Some 31,000 outages were in hard-hit Ohio, where Debby-related storms including tornadoes blew through the northeastern part of the state on Wednesday.
Debby’s last day and night over the U.S. inundated parts of New York, Pennsylvania and New England with rain and flash flooding on Friday, prompting evacuations and rescues.
Officials in Tioga County in north-central Pennsylvania said Sunday morning that 10 teams of emergency service volunteers would be out surveying residents about damage as responders kept up the search for a person missing since the flooding.
“Please be kind to them, because these are volunteers … they work here in the 911 center, they’re fire, police, they’re EMS, these folks are dedicating their Sunday to help you out,” said County Commissioner Marc Rice.
Faith-based disaster relief organizations were also mobilizing to help assess damage and provide help, state Rep. Clint Owlett said. “That’s going to be a big deal.”
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center is tracking another potential tropical storm in the Atlantic. Officials said a tropical depression is likely to form within the next day or two and could approach portions of the Greater Antilles by the middle of the week.
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Ramer reported from in Concord, New Hampshire. Philip Marcelo in New York also contributed to this report.