Rainfall and Inland Flooding: The Hazard That Reaches Farthest

When people picture hurricane damage, they picture wind and coastal surge. But over recent decades, inland freshwater flooding from rainfall has been one of the leading causes of death in U.S. tropical systems — often striking people who thought they were too far from the coast to be at risk. Why rainfall is so dangerous It does not need a strong storm. A weak tropical storm or even a decaying depression can drop catastrophic rain. It travels. Heavy rain bands and the storm's remnants can flood communities hundreds of miles inland, days after landfall. Slow storms are worse. A system that sta…