More Than 150 Dead, Hurricane Helene Dumps 40 Trill Gallons Rain; Fill Lake Tahoe, Dallas Stadium 51K Times [View all]

'More than 150 dead after Hurricane Helene dumps over 40tn gallons of rain.' The Guardian, Oct. 1, 2024. - Searchers using helicopters to get past washed-out bridges and hike through wilderness to reach isolated homes
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The death toll has surpassed 150 as searchers use helicopters to get past washed-out bridges and hike through wilderness to reach isolated homes. Crews were still trudging through knee-deep muck and debris in the wake of the deadly category 4 storm that dumped more than 40tn gallons of rain on the southern US after it crashed ashore in Florida on Thursday.

The amount of rainfall is enough to fill Lake Tahoe – with its depth of 1,645ft and surface area of 191 sq miles – or 60m Olympic-sized swimming pools. It could also fill the Dallas Cowboys’ 80,000-seat stadium 51,000 times over. “That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s water center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, according to the Associated Press.

“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.”

Clark said the estimate of 40tn gallons was, if anything, conservative. Also, if that amount of water had fallen in the parched western states, it would have been enough to fill Lake Powell and Lake Mead twice over, he said...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/01/hurricane-helene-rainfall