Hey Miles,

Yes, over 7" of rain is an extraordinary total! But it serves to highlight several important meteorological facts:

1- decaying tropical cyclones are not to be ignored. For example, the remnants of Hurricane Agnes killed nearly 300 people in ridiculous flooding in Pennsylvania in the 1970s (a mortality total that stood until Katrina in '05). Also, Tropical Storm Allison made landfall near Houston in 2001 with winds of 50 mph. Woop. But in the succeeding days, the 30+" of rain that fell caused over $1 billion (with "b") in damage and killed 30 people. So while intensity is daunting, far more people are killed by flooding than by the wind.

2- the SE coast receives remnants of tropical cyclones ("tropical cyclone" is nothing more than a general word that includes hurricanes, tropical storms, typhoons, etc.) quite frequently. They are actually very important to reservior recharge. You might find it interesting to compare Fay's rains with the Eno river discharge in Sept of 1996 during Fran's passage (I assume you were in Chapel Hill then... I think I heard that the campus closed for a day or 2 to cleanup the limbs/etc.) Just to see how "extraordinary" this rain was.

3- That 7.5" of rain must have come exactly over the Eno River watershed, and fallen in a hurry, to produce that kind of record maximum (>4000 cfs, compared to previous high of ~250 cfs). It's possible that the sensor failed during Fran.

4- Hope you guys stayed dry & weren't caught up in any kind of flash flood!

Thanks for the meteo-related post :-)

I think the reason the maxium from last night was SO MUCH higher than the previous record was that it is the record for that specific date. So if you looked at the record for the dates when Fran was in NC (late Sept?), the record high may be much higher.