Debby brings record rain to York, Chester and Lancaster SC. Storm nearly fills Lake Wylie
Debby dropped what’s believed to be record rain totals on York County Thursday, with one reporting station measuring over 7.5 inches, weather officials said.
The personal station about 4 miles southwest of Rock Hill showed 7.52 inches of rain from Tropical Storm Debby, according to National Weather Service online data and meteorologist Mike Rehnburg at the NWS Greenville-Spartanburg office. A second personal station about 2 miles southwest of Lake Wylie showed 5.98 inches, according to the NWS.
Those stations are not government recording stations but send data to the NWS, Rehnburg said. The official NWS recording station at the Rock Hill/York County Airport showed 4.28 inches.
“A pretty hefty total,” Rehnburg said of the totals in York County.
The rain is believed to be a record for a daily total on Aug. 8, Rehnburg said.
The previous record for Rock Hill, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration archives, was at a Winthrop rain gauge in Aug. 8, 1993. That showed a record rainfall on Aug. 8 of 3.68 inches.
On Thursday, the nearby Charlotte airport also smashed its previous Aug. 8 record of 1.27 inches with 4.09 inches, the NWS reported late Thursday.
The Debby deluge flooded several area roads Thursday. Almost all streets were back to normal operation Friday morning, emergency management officials in York, Lancaster, and Chester counties said Friday.
Officials are looking Friday at culverts and bridges that flooded and a few rural areas that had flooding.
“Hopefully all will be back to normal today,” said Chuck Haynes, York County Emergency Management director on Friday morning.
Lake Wylie nears its tipping point + outages
Lake Wylie rose more than 2 feet above its target level due to rain from Debby, and was within half a foot of its tipping point Friday morning, according to Duke Energy.
Duke, the company that manages lakes on the Catawba River, issued a notice Friday morning asking people along Lake Wylie to use caution.
The notice said, “Lake Wylie is higher than normal due to recent rainfall. Hydro Operations is moving water through the river system. High water conditions can create navigational hazards. Please pay close attention to changing weather conditions and take any necessary precautions. Updates will be provided as conditions change.”
Lake Wylie typically sits 3 feet below its full pond, or the point where more water would cause the lake to flood its banks.
Flooding is rare on Wylie since Duke can use the 11 lakes on the Catawba chain to move water and avoid it. Duke said it dropped Wylie about a foot below its target, or 4 feet below full pond, on Wednesday in anticipation of Debby’s rain.
All but one lake on the Catawba chain was above its target on Friday morning. Three South Carolina lakes were above their full pond levels. Cedar Creek is 2 feet higher, while Lake Wateree and Fishing Creek Lake were just above theirs.
Topping the full pond level means water will flow over spillways, which is how dams are supposed to operate, said Duke Energy spokesman Ben Williamson.
“That doesn’t mean that we’re going to see flooding. It doesn’t mean that people are going to have issues in their yards, that sort of thing,” he said.
But rivers may flow faster, which requires caution for boaters or paddlers. Docks on the water can be affected, and severe storms can bring floating debris that can cause problems for boaters. Only the middle and lower lakes on the Catawba chain are expected to near or reach full pond levels because of Debby.
“If you live along the lake or are near the lake, continue to place close attention to the weather conditions,” Williamson said.
The storm knocked out power to more than 6,000 customers Thursday in York, Chester, and Lancaster counties, according to utilities and Poweroutage.us, a website that aggregates live data from utilities across the country.
Most power was restored by late Thursday, but more than 1,600 customers in Chester County near Interstate 77 lost power Friday morning for several hours when trees fell, according to Poweroutage.us and Duke Energy’s outage map. It was restored later Friday.
By noon Friday only a handful of customers in all three counties were without service
The forecast Friday: hot again
After Thursday’s rain, Friday is expected to return to hot temperatures around 90 degrees, said Rehnburg the NWS meteorologist. There is the possibility of showers or rain Friday afternoon, but no severe weather is expected, he said.
The next several days shows slim 20-30 % possibilities of rain through Thursday of next week.
This story was originally published August 9, 2024 at 9:58 AM.
