National Weather Service flood warnings covered 20 counties and coastal zones across six states Friday, down from 28 alerts across nine states a day earlier, as the multi-day flooding threat that swept from Arizona through the Southeast this week continued to concentrate over eastern North Carolina and South Carolina’s Grand Strand.
Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas all had active flood warnings as of Friday, the National Weather Service said. That is a narrower footprint than Thursday, when Alaska, Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming were also carrying flood alerts; those states have since dropped off the list, even as Kansas appears for the first time this week.
North Carolina remains the epicenter. The Weather Service’s warnings cover roughly 20 counties and zones in the eastern half of the state, stretching from Martin, Pitt, Beaufort and Washington counties near the Pamlico Sound down through Duplin, Lenoir, Jones, Onslow and both Craven zones to the Outer Banks, including Ocracoke and Hatteras islands. A second warning covers Robeson, Bladen, Columbus, and the inland and coastal sections of Pender, New Hanover and Brunswick counties near Wilmington, plus Union County outside Charlotte. The Weather Service says excessive runoff from rain that has already fallen this week may still push rivers, creeks and low-lying areas over their banks in those areas.
South Carolina’s Pee Dee and Grand Strand regions carry similar warnings, covering Dillon, Florence, Marion and Williamsburg counties along with both the inland and coastal portions of Horry and Georgetown counties.
In Alabama, flash flood warnings cover Madison, Morgan, Marshall, Jackson, DeKalb and Cullman counties in the northern part of the state near Huntsville; the Weather Service notes the same rain is affecting adjacent counties in southern middle Tennessee, though those areas fall outside today’s official warning states. Kansas and Texas each have one active warning — in Ottawa County and Dimmit County, respectively — marking new ground for a threat that had been concentrated almost entirely in the Southeast this week.
Most of the North Carolina warnings run through this afternoon or into Saturday morning, while the Alabama warnings are set to expire this evening. The Weather Service is telling residents in flood-prone areas of all six states to monitor later forecasts and be ready to act if additional flood warnings are issued, as the moisture plume driving the rain continues to work through the Southeast heading into the weekend.