Heavy rains of more than a foot (30 centimeters) inundated the southeast coast of North Carolina on Monday as an unnamed storm moved ashore and headed toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

The National Hurricane Center classified it as a potential Tropical Cyclone 8 and said in updated forecasts that the front would weaken as it moved over land overnight.

The worst of the unrest may already have hit the region: A volunteer National Weather Service weather station measured 18 inches of rain in Carolina Beach on Monday, forcing the city government and recreation center to close, a statement said.

Carolina Beach State Park was also closed for the day, park officials said. U.S. Highway 17 south of Wilmington was also closed, according to state and local authorities.

Similar volunteer weather stations at other coastal locations, including the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport, reported rainfall amounts of more than 14 inches, the weather service said.

A National Weather Service meteorologist said it was too early to say whether these were record highs, but the weather office in Wilmington would likely have that answer by late Tuesday morning.

Buildings in New Hanover County on the southeast coast were damaged by flooding, Governor Roy Cooper’s office reported.

“We are experiencing severe flooding due to heavy rains, so please be careful not to drive through flooded roads,” Cooper said in a statement Monday.

According to the weather service, a flash flood was confirmed in the community of Kelly in the state of North Carolina, about 60 kilometers inland from Wilmington. A road was closed as a result, it said.

In Brunswick County, several roads were submerged. The sheriff’s office released images of roads that turned into waterways or were impassable due to missing sections of asphalt.

On Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service in central Brunswick County urged residents to seek shelter as “a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado” threatened the area near Leland, according to a tornado warning that has since expired.

Tornado warnings for Emerald Isle, Swansboro, Cape Carteret and Cedar Point expired early Monday evening. It was not clear if any tornadoes touched down, and the weather service typically does not confirm them until the next day. It sends ground observers to possible locations when it is safe to do so.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation reported several weather-related road closures and said the Cherry Branch–Minnesott Beach and Bayview–Aurora ferries had suspended service on Monday.

The governor’s office said weather-related road closures occurred in Sampson, Duplin, Brunswick, New Hanover, Onslow and Pender counties.

The state emergency operations center has been placed in “enhanced” operating mode, Cooper’s office said, and the state’s emergency crews are ready to respond if needed.

On Monday evening, the weather office in Wilmington announced that the worst part of the front was over.

“The heavy rains have stopped,” said a statement on the flash flood. “Flooding is no longer expected to pose a threat.”

The disturbance was located 45 miles west of Cape Fear and moving north-northwest at 7 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest warning. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to 35 mph, although the weather service’s volunteer weather station at Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point measured a gust of 77 mph earlier in the day.

Sustained winds of 74 mph qualify a storm for hurricane status. A small craft advisory warning of “hazardous boating conditions” was in effect Monday for waters from Cape Hatteras to Ocracoke Inlet and was in effect through Wednesday morning.

With wind gusts of up to 28 miles per hour expected in the Atlantic, a buoy tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOA) off Cape Hatteras measured a wave height of 11 feet.

“Further weakening is expected over the next few days, and the low pressure system is expected to dissipate over the Carolinas by Wednesday morning,” the hurricane center said in its warning.

Eight million people in the Carolinas were under tropical storm warnings or watches on Monday.

According to NBC News meteorologists, the disturbance was expected to move across the central Appalachians, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday and then bring showers to eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and southern New York on Wednesday.

Federal government and NBC News meteorologists said the storm did not spend enough time over the normally fertile waters of the warm Atlantic to develop into anything stronger than a potential tropical cyclone.

When the hurricane makes landfall on Monday evening and then moves northeast, meteorologists say it will dissipate and have virtually no chance of being named.