Yet the numbers could have been even higher, and the destruction much closer to home. Imagine a storm that brought the rain of Floyd - and took the path of Hurricane Hugo. The damage to the Charlotte region might not cover the same area as Floyd, which at its highest point had 6,600 square miles of Eastern North Carolina underwater. But it would certainly be severe, and potentially just as costly, in large part because so many lives and so much valuable property has been placed in some of the region's most flood-prone areas. Twenty inches of rain might not kill as many people, might not mean the widespread devastation of Hurricane Floyd.
Flooding occurs when water falling from the sky has nowhere to go.
Down East, Hurricane Floyd's 20 inches of rain combined with ground already soggy from Hurricane Dennis to back up waterways and send them spilling over their banks. The eastern stretches of the Carolinas are flat coastal plains, featuring sandy soil that doesn't easily soak up water and soft, slow slopes that encourage storm water to stay in one place for days on end. The mountains rarely get such heavy rains, but when they do the rolling hills and peaks send runoff to low ground, usually the heavier-populated valleys that sit between peaks. Charlotte, on the other hand, is in a better position to handle heavy rain than almost any other part of the Carolinas. The region slopes downhill, meaning floodwater dissipates fairly quickly.