Meteorologists calculate that 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. It's an unheard-of amount of water that stunned experts. It's enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys' stadium 51,000 times or Lake Tahoe just once.
Experts say more than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it. One says the stunning number has the fingerprints of climate change on it.FILE - Men walk down a street flooded by Hurricane Helene in the Shore Acres neighborhood Sept. 27, 2024, in St. Petersburg, Fla.
FILE - Jonah Wark, right, kisses his wife Sara Martin outside their flood-damaged home on the Pigeon River in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Sept. 28, 2024, in Newport, Tenn. , using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico.
FILE - A stop sign is barely visible in floodwaters of a parking lot after torrential rain from Hurricane Helene, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, in Morganton, N.C.
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