Here's how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South
CLIMATE
Heres how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Updated 6:00 PM EDT, September 30, 2024
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
Thats enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). Its enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
Thats an astronomical amount of precipitation, said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.'
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