Not a hurricane, but it still dumped 18 inches of rain in 12 hours on North Carolina

It never officially got a name, but for residents along the coast of North and South Carolina, Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight will be one they won't forget. 

On Monday, the massive coastal storm dropped historic rain on the mid-Atlantic coast, with some places picking up more than 18 inches in less than 12 hours. It's being called a one in a thousand-year event by meteorologists.

Accuweather meteorologists say the only reason it wasn't a named storm like Francine is that it's an "open-sided" storm, but it still spawned tornado warnings, severe thunderstorms and torrential rains on Monday evening in the Carolinas and southern Virginia.

The system made landfall in South Carolina before continuing inland and gradually weakening. The low-pressure area is expected to dissipate over the Carolinas on Wednesday.

In the small coastal town of Carolina Beach, the result was widespread flooding and dozens of residents were trapped due to rising water levels. 

In nearby Sunny Point, North Carolina, wind gusts reached 77 mph and led to waves as high as 10 feet, eroding the beaches.

Enough rain is still forecast to fall to push small streams out of their banks, trigger urban flooding and cause significant rises on some of the rivers in the area from the Carolinas to Virginia, despite being in drought conditions for the past several weeks.



(Photo: Wilmington, NC Fire Department via Accuweather)