"The water had that angry force. Like it would turn your furniture around...it went in there like a thief and turned over everything. Turned your bed sideways. It's just devastating. To look at that, that's when it breaks you up."
Less than two weeks before Hurricane Floyd made landfall, North Carolina had been inundated with rain from slow-moving Hurricane Dennis. As Dennis drifted for days off the North Carolina coast, its winds dumped 3 to 10 inches across the eastern half of the state. The ground was saturated with water and waterways were still flowing with run-off from Dennis when Hurricane Floyd struck the state on September 16, 1999.
In early September, the spiraling formation of wind and rain known as Hurricane Floyd formed as a tropical wave off the Western coast of Africa. It crossed the Atlantic, picking up speed and intensity. By the time it hit parts of the Bahamas, it was considered a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
