Record rainfall was widespread, with one observer in Altapass, NC, recording 22.22 inches of rain for the 24-hour period from 2 pm, July 15-16. This storm moved west and passed over Charleston and Columbia, reaching the southern North Carolina mountains on the 15th and 16th as a tropical storm.
This storm produced no flooding, but the ground was thoroughly saturated and streams were running high when the second storm, a Category 2 hurricane, made landfall on the South Carolina coast on July 14. The storm then moved slowly north, producing heavy rainfall over the mountains and foothills of North Carolina as it weakened and dissipated over southeast Tennessee a few days later. The first storm, a major hurricane, made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Alabama on July 5. Two tropical cyclones wreaked havoc on western North Carolina in July 1916. Path of the Okeechobee Hurricane September 10 to 20, 1928, courtesy the National Hurricane Center Senate to pass a $6 million farm relief bill for the Southeast in 1930. Remarkably, a similar event occurred in October 1929, with crests generally lower than in 1928 however, the resulting crop damage in these 2 years prompted the U.S.
Robeson County alone had thousands of dollars in damage to homes and approximately $1 million in crop damage. Total property and crop damage is not known. Rail and bus service between towns was limited for several weeks because bridges and rail lines were out of service. Transportation was greatly affected with roads and rail lines flooded or cut by flood waters. Several other towns were also temporarily isolated and ran low on supplies. The Red Cross and Army Corps of Engineers delivered relief supplies by boat. In Canetuck Township in Pender County, 175 people were isolated as the flooding from the Cape Fear and Black Rivers prevented them from evacuating. Particularly hard hit were Lumberton, where hundreds were left homeless, and Hoppersville, near Kinston, where water was reported to be lapping at the rooftops of deserted homes. News reports for the event are somewhat sketchy, in part due to the focus on the horrific destruction the hurricane produced in Puerto Rico and Florida, but hundreds of Carolina homes were flooded. Additionally, the Lumber River at Lumberton crested at its highest level ever as did the Lumber River at Boardman. The crest on the Waccamaw River at Conway, SC, remains the record for the site so it is probable that the crest at Freeland was higher than that of Hurricane Floyd in 1999. These sites include the Cape Fear River at Fayetteville (4th), the Cape Fear River at Elizabethtown (3rd), the Northeast Cape Fear River at Chinquapin (2nd), the Tar River at Tarboro (5th), and the Neuse River at Kinston (5th). Even now, the resulting crests remain in the top five for many area gage locations. The resulting flood produced crests that were records, or near record, up to that time for many locations in eastern North Carolina. Rainfall amounts of this magnitude are common for slow moving tropical systems and typically do not result in extreme flooding however, this rain fell at a time when rivers in eastern North Carolina were high as they were in receding from heavy rainfall earlier in the month. While the storm caused minimal wind damage as it moved through North Carolina, the storm did produce 4 to 9 inches of rain over eastern North Carolina. The Okeechobee Hurricane in 1928 decimated Puerto Rico and southįlorida near Palm Beach before moving northward through Georgia and the Carolinas where it maintained tropical storm intensity.