All of eastern North Carolina is under a tornado watch as tropical storm Debby approaches, and early Thursday morning tornado warnings have been issued in several counties.
Tropical Storm Debby made a second landfall near Charleston early Thursday morning, as tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.
Nick Pietro with the National Weather Service in Raleigh said as the system enters North Carolina, rain will be the greatest threat.
"The primary threat from Tropical Storm Debbie being prolonged heavy rain, that's going to be in subsequent river flooding, isolated tornadoes and maybe some isolated wind gusts up to 40 mph. Scattered power outages throughout the event.”
Pietro said the heavy rains that are expected, already saturated soils, and tornado activity are not a good mix.
"Is it doesn't take, you know, massive amounts of wind to blow trees down when you just had 6 inches of rain. The grounds were soggy, so trees fall much more easily with lower wind speeds. Sometimes they fall even without any wind when there's 6-8 inches of rain that just fell.”
