Despite Hurricane Florence weakening rapidly in wind strength, large areas of North and South Carolina are still expecting more than 300mm of rain to fall over the next 3 days.

When Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday morning local time, it brought winds gusting over 160km/h and a stormsurge causing coastal inundation of over 3 metres in height.

Since making landfall, Florence has also dumped over 800mm of rain in some places in North Carolina, with widespread rainfall of about 200mm in the last 2 days. This has broken all-time state records for highest 2-day & 3-day rainfall totals, and the highest rainfall seen from a single tropical system.

Hurricane Florence now joins North Carolina with Texas (with Hurricane Harvey) and Hawaii (with Hurricane Lane) as systems to break their all-time state rainfall records in the last 13 months.

Although Florence has been downgraded to a tropical storm, and will likely lose this status later today, the moisture it has brought north will continue to produce rain until at least Tuesday night.

Further rainfall of over 150mm is expected over virtually all of western parts of North Carolina, exceeding 350mm in some places near the coast. The busy city of Charlotte is expecting falls greater than 200mm, prompting flash warnings to stay in-effect.

The system has brought these large rainfall totals by moving very slowly (about 3-4 km/h on average) over the last few days and the high pressure ridge in its way is not moving anytime soon.

To keep up to date with the latest forecast tracks and rainfall amounts visit https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/?atlc