HAMLET — Students might be able to sleep in a little tomorrow.
Richmond County Schools said this evening that the district will be two hours behind schedule on Tuesday because of heavy rains and the chance of floods in some areas caused by Potential Tropical Cyclone 8.
RCS says that students at the Ninth Grade Academy and Richmond Senior High School will still go to their first block.
Richmond Community College is back to normal now, and high school students who will miss classes because of the delay should talk to their teachers about making up work they missed.
Until 8 a.m. Tuesday, the county and surrounding area are under a flood watch. Forecasters say that the region will get an average of 2 to 5 inches of rain, with some places getting up to or more than 7 inches.
Lee Berry shared a picture of his Ellerbe rain gauge, which showed a little more than 1.5 inches of rain. A reporter for RO named Betty Gallo McIntyre said that between Rockingham and Cordova around 6:30 p.m., she emptied her gauge 4.5 inches.
At 7:30 p.m., Emergency Services Director Bob Smith did not have the most recent count.
WECT-TV says that water has shut down roads along the coast. In Brunswick County, parts of U.S. 17 and N.C. 211 are closed, and in Columbus County, U.S. 74 is closed. The places also have a number of secondary roads that are closed.
WECT says that by 2 p.m., more than 18 inches of rain had fallen at Carolina Beach.
Up until 2 a.m., there is also a wind warning.
The last public warning about this storm came out at 5 p.m. from the National Hurricane Center. At that point, the storm was 45 miles west of Cape Fear and moving 7 mph north-northwest. Its top steady wind speed was 35 mph.