Floods trigger South Carolina emergency

A deluge roared over the East Coast in America on Saturday (October 3), causing blackouts and evacuations and threatening all-time rainfall records in South Carolina and the southern Appalachians. Four people died on Friday and Saturday in traffic incidents due to the weather, including one when a tree fell on a highway.

A hurricane as seen from orbit

The potentially historic precipitation will last all 48 hours of the weekend. Hurricane Joaquin, currently off the Bahamas, has winds of up to 250 km/h. The storm is not expected to hit the eastern US, but the moisture associated with it is contributing to heavy rainfall, particularly in South Carolina.

Map of the United States with South Carolina highlighted

And while Joaquin drenches the Northeast, a second weather system - a separate low-pressure rainmaker - dumps on the Southeast.

As if one wasn't bad enough.

Latest view of Hurricane Joaquin

President Barack Obama declared an emergency in South Carolina. This means that state and local authorities can receive federal help to deal with the flooding. In Charleston, South Carolina, people paddled kayaks and canoes down city streets as more than 15 centimetres of rain fell on Saturday. Many streets have been closed and sandbags have been piled up to keep floodwaters out.

Residents building a sandbag wall - sandbags help to form a protective barrier so that the water level does not rise and get inside the house

Said a Charleston resident,

“It is impossible to navigate the peninsula right now without a kayak or a monster truck. Having weathered plenty of hurricanes in the Bahamas where my family lives and living in Charleston for 10 years, I have never seen rainfall like this."

(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)