CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Rain from Florence, the storm system that was a Tropical Depression as of early Sunday afternoon, was starting to fall in parts of southern West Virginia at the close of the weekend ahead of what was expected to be a wet Monday statewide.
“We’ve had plenty of rain this summer,” Tim Farley, director of the Mercer County Office of Emergency Management, told MetroNews on Sunday when his county became the first in West Virginia to be put under a National Weather Service Flood Watch due to Florence.
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“It’s been very unusual, a very wet summer and we’re having trouble getting into a dry season. The cycle has just been continually wet all summer,” Farley said.
The weakening Florence dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of North Carolina and South Carolina after coming ashore as a Category 1 hurricane early Friday driving major rivers there to record levels.
As of Sunday, at least 14 deaths in the southeast U.S. were being blamed on Florence, according to ABC News.
For West Virginia’s lowlands, the Florence forecast was one to two inches of rain with two to three inches of rain possible in eastern West Virginia by Tuesday, including in mountain counties like Pocahontas County and Randolph County.
“On the eastern slopes we like it to call it, that’s where the more significant rains will fall — say from Mercer, Summers, Greenbrier counties, that’s where the two to three, maybe localized four inch amounts, will occur,” said Nick Webb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Charleston office.
Those areas could see Florence’s heaviest rain by Monday morning before what was left of the storm shifted to the north and east on a track that will take it out of West Virginia via the Eastern Panhandle.
Localized flash flooding was possible out of any heavy bands of rain that could train through the day Monday in both southern and northern West Virginia, forecasters said.
In addition to potential flash flooding in Mercer County, Farley said mudslides and tree falls may affect power due to Florence’s rain on already saturated ground.
“It’s a wait-and-see game,” he said on Sunday morning.
Isolated tornadoes were also a threat along with high wind gusts.
“We’re still going to have winds, 30 to maybe 40 mph, especially across the higher elevations,” said Webb.
“Normally, we wouldn’t expect that to cause too many issues but, when you have saturated soils, it won’t take much wind to cause some isolated issues as far as downed trees are concerned.”
As of early Sunday afternoon, Webb said no major West Virginia rivers were forecast to go into flood stages due to Florence.
However, he noted, “We’re still paying attention to a couple of basins — the New River Basin and the Greenbrier (River Basin) as well — for any potential issues.”