The second video here (near the end) showing storm clouds and heavy flooding in Raleigh, NC caught my eye this morning because I lived there from 1995 to 1997. Some of my best storm chases (be they hurricane or thunderstorm) were in the Raleigh area, so it brings back memories. The weather is rarely as exciting here in State College PA.

http://vortex.accuweather.com/video/video_inline_launchv4.asp?video=1-VPID05052009203531953&hd=false

Above is a video of possible tornado damage in Rock Ridge which is in Wilson County, NC. WRAL has an excellent time-lapse video of the storm overtaking I-540 (WRAL is owned by Capitol Broadcasting Company which is who I worked for when I lived there - in their Internet division). WRAL says that the belltower at NC State was damaged by lightning, a dozen homes were damaged and three people were injured. Multiple funnel clouds and tornadoes were sighted by NWS Spotters (see map below).

WRAL also had a great selection of user-submitted photos including the massive storm over Raleigh and a funnel cloud in Nash County. Channel 11 has a video report from Anthony Wilson, reporting near Wilson (the town) in Wilson County, ironically.

Here is what the radar looked like when "the big one" came through Raleigh around 7:00 last night (courtesy AccuWeather.com MapSpace™ (the "X" is where I used to live):

Now we eagerly await Storm Surveys from the NWS in Raleigh showing whether the damage was indeed from tornadoes (I'm almost positive that some of it will be, just looking at the video above).

Here is the rainfall chart for the last 24 hours from the NWS Hourly Gauge-Adjusted Doppler Precip Site is below. The red area in south-central NC is right over the city of Charlotte. If you look at the 48-hour precip map, you can see that much of the state has had over an inch or two of rain, so additional storms expected to form this afternoon, and more rain tomorrow, will aggravate flooding concerns. See our Headlines at right or your AccuWeather.com 15-Day Forecast for official thoughts; here is a guess from the high-res 4-KM WRF model last night as to what today's total rainfall will look like:

The NWS North Carolina Record Reports talk about the many daily rainfall records set across the state:

New Bern: 2.63" Charlotte: 2.40" Winston Salem (Piedmont Triad): 1.75" Raleigh: 0.98"

Crabtree Creek rose from 4 to 9 feet at Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh (this creek was responsible for the flooding photo that I took below in 1996), but fell short of Flood Stage. The storm in Raleigh painted a narrow band of heavy rain across the city... here's a Storm Total (this is a radar estimate only, so it's not as accurate as the map above) from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus:

The story was similar in Charlotte:

So it was a busy day this week. Even Asheville, where I went to school at UNCA, got in on the action Sunday, clocking 90-mph winds.

As a storm chaser, I'm jealous, though of course I wouldn't wish any injury or damage on people. The storm above reminds me of the June 2 (?) 1996 storm (which for some reason I seem to have lost my pictures of on the web, though I just ran across the old video tape at home recently). Here are some other personal memories of storms near Raleigh in 1996:

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