Northern Florida, the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina and parts of North Carolina are bracing for severe rain and catastrophic flooding this week as the Debby storm system moves up and east.
Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday, first hitting the small community of Steinhatchee. It damaged homes and businesses, sent floodwaters rising, caused sweeping power outages across the state and Georgia and led to several fatalities. Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm midday Monday.
But experts say the worst is yet to come as the storm system is expected to stall over the Southeast region.
How much rain is expected?
Forecasters say the system could pummel the Southeast with widespread areas of up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain and some totaling up to 30 inches (76 centimeters).
That would be a record-setting rainfall, shattering the record from a tropical system in …