Two major weather events dominated weekend headlines: deadly flooding in rural Tennessee and Tropical Storm Henri dumping rain on the northeastern United States. The video above shows some of the damage left behind by the flooding. It also shows Henri hitting Long Island Sunday.
The Tennessee flooding killed at least 22 people and took out roads, cellphone towers and telephone lines.
“I would expect, given the number of fatalities, that we’re going to see mostly recovery efforts at this point rather than rescue efforts,” Tennessee Emergency Management Director Patrick Sheehan said.
18 people remained missing as of Monday afternoon. The names of the missing were on a board in the Humphreys County emergency center and listed on a city of Waverly Facebook page. The page was being updated as people call in and report themselves safe.
Up to 17 inches of rain fell in Humphreys County in less than 24 hours Saturday. That broke the Tennessee record for one-day rainfall by more than 3 inches according to the National Weather Service.
Farther northeast, residents in New England began their weekend cleaning up the damage left behind by Tropical Storm Henri. The National Hurricane Center said the remnants from Henri, now a post-tropical cyclone, were expected to produce 1 to 2 inches of rain in New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York, and 1 to 3 inches of rain over southern and central New England through the end of Monday night. The NHC warned the rain could lead to more flooding. Those flooding risks were expected to diminish by early Tuesday.
A brief tornado or two could hit Monday night as well.
No deaths have been attributed to Henri, but thousands remained without power across the region as crews scrambled to remove toppled trees and power lines through Monday.
President Joe Biden has declared disasters in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut, opening the purse strings for federal recovery aid to those states.
“We don’t know the full extent of the storm’s impact [Sunday], but we’re acting to prepare for and prevent damage as much as possible and to speed help to affected communities so they can recover as quickly as possible,” Biden said.
