Tropical Depression Chantal Floods Alamance County, Haw River Overflows

The Haw River covered Saxapahaw's main bridge entirely Sunday as Tropical Depression Chantal pushed the waterway to 32.50 feet in Alamance County, just three-tenths of a foot below the all-time record set by Hurricane Fran in 1996. Apartment buildings and commercial storefronts had their bottom floors inundated, cars were nearly fully submerged at the flood's peak, and most of the village lost electricity, with residents estimating that power restoration could take at least a week.

Burlington's airport set a new daily rainfall record dating back to 2001, measuring 5.75 inches on Sunday. Rainfall exceeded 10 inches across parts of Alamance, Orange, and Chatham counties, with CoCoRaHS observers recording up to 10.37 inches near Pittsboro in Chatham County. Chantal had made landfall as a tropical storm in South Carolina before weakening to a tropical depression and pushing northward through central North Carolina.

NCDOT closed 120 roads in Alamance County due to flooding, including both directions of I-40/85 near Graham. Bridge maintenance teams inspected the corridor before reopening the interstate Monday morning, once water levels dropped sufficiently. A portion of NC 902 elsewhere in the state was entirely washed away.

Voluntary evacuations were ordered in Mebane due to concerns about a potential dam failure. Alamance, Person, Moore, and Orange counties each declared states of emergency. Governor Josh Stein was scheduled to visit Tuesday to survey the damage.

A single building in Saxapahaw's village center held a visible record of the disaster: watermarks showing the two worst floods in its history, with the Chantal line sitting well above the Hurricane Fran mark from 1996 and just below the highest point from a 1945 flood.

State Sen. Amy Galey, R-Alamance, credited the county's long history of water rescues on the Haw as a factor in the emergency response. "That's sort of a training ground that bears fruit in situations like this, where you have more motorists getting stranded," Galey said. She also expressed concern about potential damage to county schools and the difficulty of reopening isolated rural roads.

More than 23,000 people were without electricity by Monday morning. The state Highway Patrol confirmed one fatality in Chatham County, where an 83-year-old woman's car was submerged and swept away. Two tornadoes were confirmed statewide from the storm: one in New Hanover County and a second at the Raleigh Executive Jetport in Lee County, where mobile homes were destroyed and trees uprooted.

The Haw River near Bynum in Chatham County crested at 22.48 feet Monday morning, apparently surpassing its 1996 record of 21.76 feet. The Eno River reached 25.64 feet, the highest level ever recorded on that waterway. Total losses from Chantal were estimated at $500 million, according to risk analytics firm Gallagher Re.