ST. LOUIS – The rainfall footprint from Hurricane Helene was tremendous. It stretched from the Florida panhandle up into the Carolinas and then back into the Ohio Valley and Midwest.
The heaviest rainfall total was reported from Busick, North Carolina, with more than 30 inches. Ashville reported nearly 14 inches before their equipment failed, and Atlanta hit a total of just under a foot.
When we add up all the rainfall from within the footprint, we get a rough estimate of about 40 trillion gallons of water. That is 40—followed by 12 zeros!
To put that into terms we can better understand here in St. Louis, let’s look at the footprint of the City of St. Louis.
The city covers 66 square miles. The arch is 630 feet tall. It would take 8.6 trillion gallons of water to fill St. Louis with water up to the height of the Gateway Arch. If you poured the entire 40 trillion gallons from Helene into the city limits of St. Louis, you would flood the city up to 2,911 feet!
That is more than 4.6 times the height of the Arch, or more than a half mile of water. This should give you a little better appreciation for how much water fell and why the flooding was so catastrophic.
