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More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That's enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys' stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It's enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That's an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. "I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.''

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much of it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it's more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina's Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017's Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

In a quick analysis, not peer-reviewed but using a method published in a study about Hurricane Harvey's rainfall, three scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab determined that climate change caused 50% more rainfall during Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

The city is one of many areas in western North Carolina still recovering from Helene.

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MORGANTON, N.C. — The city of Morganton is one of many areas in western North Carolina still recovering from Helene.

The city makes up at least 5% of the power outages in the Carolinas.

Burke County leaders are still reporting downed power lines, no cell service, blocked roads, and receding flood waters.

WFMY News 2's Giselle Thomas visited Morganton this morning and shared more about what the conditions are like there after Helene.

She said Morganton City Hall is still closed to the general public.

The city is asking residents to fill out the following property damage form: Burke County Helene Damage Assessment Form.

If you are looking for ways to help residents in western North Carolina in the aftermath of Helene, we have a list of reputable organizations who are already in action assisting in areas impacted by the storm. If you have suggestions for organizations to be added to this list, you can contact us at [email protected].

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Justin Davis summed the damage caused by Tropical Storm Helene to his Morganton restaurant in one word Monday afternoon: “Heartbreaking.”

Davis is one of the owners of Town Tavern in the River Village shopping center on Sanford Drive in Morganton. He said flooding from the adjacent Catawba River rose about 5 feet into the restaurant.

“It’s devastating. It’s pretty sad to see,” Davis said.

He said the damage to the restaurant is substantial.

“I guess they call it a hundred-year flood,” Davis said. “I hope I never see nothing like it again in my lifetime.”

He said he hopes to rebuild, but the owners, like everyone else, are taking it day by day. He said the restaurant will have to be gutted and renovated from scratch.

“Build back bigger, better,” Davis said of starting over.

The restaurant opened in its River Village location in March 2021, Davis said.

He said it was a beautiful restaurant that people seemed to enjoy. Other locations of Town Tavern are in Blowing Rock and Banner Elk. Even though those two towns suffered devastating destruction, the Town Taverns in those locations faired much better than the Morganton location, Davis said.

“We were real fortunate that all of our locations are good, but all around us is just so much destruction everywhere,” Davis said. “Roads washed out, trees, roads, homes destroyed and flooding. It’s just so much to process. All the office buildings in that strip (in Morganton) all washed out, all destroyed.”

He said he is thankful none of the employees were hurt and said things can be replaced.

“It is sad for the staff,” Davis said. “We have so many key employees. Great and wonderful employees.”

He hopes there are some programs they can get in place for the restaurant’s staff to help them out until the restaurant can rebuild.

“It’s just going to take some time,” Davis said. “But we look forward to getting back open and seeing all of our family and friends and people in the community come back in and pick up right where we left off.

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WBTV spoke to many people living in the Morganton area, dealing with the aftermath.

MORGANTON, N.C. (WBTV) - Several thousand families are without water, power, and cell phone service after Helene brought powerful winds and lots of rain, leaving behind downed trees and severe flooding in several areas in Morganton.

WBTV spoke to many people living in the Morganton area, dealing with the aftermath.

“I’m originally from Florida so I know what a Hurricane is so when we started preparing for this I just picked up all of my loose stuff and put it on the porch and said ‘ohh it’ll be okay’ I was not prepared for this. This is Hurricane and it’s like where did this come from?” questioned Morganton resident Rae-Ann Buchanan.

Many in the area are living without their everyday necessities.

“I guess it was like 7:30 we lost power and we’ve not had power since. And then today about 7:15 this morning we got the alerts that the water would be depleted once the water was gone. There was no more water through the City.” High waters quickly flooded this apartment building—-forcing families to face the harsh reality that many of their belongings are gone,” shared Morganton resident Kellie Burleson.

High waters quickly flooded an apartment building, forcing families to face the harsh reality that many of their belongings were gone.

Leslie Acevedo lives and Alejandra Lopez told WBTV about the moments waters rushed into their building.

“We were watching as the river was going but we never thought it would reach out house, and then by the afternoon it just came inside the house,” said Acevedo

“The water wet down thankfully, thank God, but everything was just floating,” explained Lopez.

The City of Morganton sent out an emergency alert stating the City’s water plant is not in operation, due to a raw water pump station being underwater.

The alert continued by saying any water in the system will soon be depleted.

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