In N.C., 12 inches of rain fell in six hours in Jacksonville

The worst of Thursday's rain fell in North Carolina, where Jacksonville picked up 12 inches — nearly a quarter of its typical annual rainfall — in the six hours between 3:30 and 9:30 a.m.

The rain was part of a system moving ahead of the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole, which dissipated over the Straits of Florida on Wednesday. Much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were starting to move into a drought after the dry summer, and the fall storm provided several inches of much-needed rain.

Crews throughout the northeast worked to pull fallen leaves from storm drains. Schools in North Carolina were closed and some farther north planned to cancel classes Friday so students wouldn't have to travel on flooded roads.

Josh Barnello, 12, took advantage of his day off to take a look at a pond that overflowed its banks in Carolina Beach.

"Someone was paddling a canoe down the street earlier," said Barnello, a budding meteorologist who used a wind speed gauge he got for Christmas to record gusts of 53 mph near his house.

Forecasters expected those heavy winds to spread up the coast, possibly toppling trees and power lines made unstable by the saturated ground.

The winds also were churning up big waves that were eating away at a "living shoreline" of rocks, sand and grasses built this year on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, said Bob Gilbert from his waterfront home in Churchton, about 10 miles south of Annapolis.

"There's not a boat in sight," Gilbert said. "The waves are really choppy and nasty-looking."

The rain caused several other wrecks Thursday, including a crash between two transit buses in Maryland that left 26 people hurt.

Standing waters and fallen limbs on tracks slowed several Amtrak trains, while some Northeast airports reported flight delays of up to three hours.

Wilmington, N.C., got a brief break from the rain Thursday morning, but the downpours quickly moved back in. Back-to-back storms have dropped a third of the rain the city usually gets all year in just five days. The 21 inches collected since Sunday was the highest five-day total in nearly 140 years of records, topping Hurricane Floyd's mark of 19 inches set in 1999, the National Weather Service said.

Sheila Mezroud said sandbags kept floodwaters out of her Carolina Beach home for only a short time. "I have to walk through an inch of water to get from the living room to the bathroom," she said.