17 photos show Hurricane Florence's devastating flooding from the sky

Ellen Cranley

Sep 18, 2018, 22:50 IST

17 photos show Hurricane Florence's devastating flooding from the sky

An official looks out a Blackhawk Helicopter at homes surrounded by flood waters due to Hurricane Florence on September 17, 2018, in Conway, South Carolina. Many rivers in the Carolinas are approaching record flood stages and their levels will continue to rise through the week.

Hurricane Florence has broken rainfall records since it made landfall late last week, dumping more than 35 inches of water in some areas of North Carolina.

Since hurricanes are classified by wind speed, Florence's downgrade to a tropical storm after it reached land didn't mean any relief from devastating amounts of rain that caused rivers in the Carolinas to spill over into nearby communities.

State, weather, and military officials, as well as news organizations, have used aircraft to capture aerial images to monitor the storm's damage. Take a look at the water that officials warn is still rising.

As the storm moved on but flooding continued, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used remote-sensing cameras on an aircraft to capture a growing series of aerial images of the storm's damage.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the map included the edges of coastal communities from South Carolina to Virginia.

Since the storm's retreat, photographers alongside state officials and thousands of US troops have also surveyed the extent of flooding, capturing specific looks at dramatic floods.

Just 100 miles from Myrtle Beach, Dillon, South Carolina was one of the communities in Florence's path that experienced some of the heaviest flooding.

In New Bern, North Carolina, rescue officials used boats and rafts to rescue 455 people trapped in their homes by floods over the weekend.

Officials in the Carolinas warned that the storm's low wind speeds and lessening rainfall shouldn't be interpreted as a weakened threat, as rising flood waters are still the biggest danger.

After only a few days on land, the storm had left a reported 32 people dead and knocked out power for more than a million residents.

The runways at Elizabethtown, North Carolina's Curtis Brown Field Airport were still surrounded by floodwaters on Monday.

Planes were left stranded in the water.

Stretches of Interstate 95 were closed down, if not completely underwater, in North and South Carolina.

By Tuesday, the North Carolina Department of Transportation was still advising drivers shouldn't travel along many stretches of I-95 and I-40 in the southeast corner of the state.

Floodwaters also swallowed low-lying train tracks in Dillon, South Carolina, where rivers are approaching record flood stages and their levels will continue to rise through the week.

Also seen surrounded by water was the Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Lumberton, which also weathered Hurricane Matthew.

The combination of rising river levels and rainfall in Lumberton caused officials to warn of unprecedented damage and that the "the worst is yet to come."

This South Carolina wastewater treatment plant was just above water on Monday.

Heavy rains flooded a cemetery in Marion, South Carolina after Florence was downgraded to a tropical depression.

It will likely take weeks or months for residents to clean up all the damage Florence left behind.

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