Evil weather!
Via USA Today:
As Hurricane Joaquin swirled in the Atlantic last fall, coastal U.S. residents heeded the warnings from the National Hurricane Center to batten down the hatches. They nailed plywood over their windows, tied down the patio furniture and hunkered down with their bottled water and flashlights.
The storm changed direction, heading out to sea, leaving the East Coast unscathed by hurricane-force winds, but a separate weather system brought drenching rain to the Southeast. Rivers rose over their banks. Highways and houses flooded. In the end, the wind speed never topped 38 mph, and yet 19 people died in South Carolina.
“We were warning about the South Carolina flood threat last year, yet people were talking about the hurricane (Joaquin) that was no threat to land,” said Marshall Shepherd, a meteorologist at the University of Georgia.
Floods, rip currents, lightning and heat kill hundreds of people each year, but experts say almost every one of those deaths is preventable.