Quoting myself for context …
This blog post from today 8/9/24
contains this money quote:
According to Gallagher Re, insured damages for Debby are likely to be $1-$2 billion, with wind-related damages contributing just a few hundreds of millions to that total. Most of Debby’s damage was from flooding, and only about 10-50% of the properties in the most heavily affected areas had flood insurance, so Debby’s total damages (both insured and uninsured) will be much higher than $1-$2 billion.
Aw shucks. I’d like to have heard a weatherman say the phrase.
We missed it by that much. 
I don’t disagree but it is an easy & objective way to measure a storm. Rainfall amounts also have to do with how fast/slow a storm moves, the topography of where it’s hitting (which you mentioned), which side of the storm you’re on, whether you’re in a bay or the storm surge can get out, & other factors.
Most coastal areas are pretty flat but once you get 50-60 miles inland by me you’re getting into elevation instead of pancake terrain. Despite being near a river I’m close to the top of the valley; if my car floods at home it’s end of days, bring back the ark type of scenario yet in the last hurricane there was debris on the roof of the parking garage / first floor of the apartments along the river.
The remnants of Debby knocked my power out. Frankly, I expected to come home from work on Thursday night to find out that I didn’t have power, so the fact that it waited until I had had a chance to heat up a TV dinner and unwind a little before cutting me off was actually rather generous, I think. The following afternoon, my power came back for, like, a minute or two, as though it were pranking me on purpose.
Debby is, as was noted above, the perfect example of the fact that the Saffir-Simpson scale is not particularly effective in measuring the destructive effects of anything other than direct wind impacts.
And now, her probable future brother Ernesto seems to be puttin’ on his dancing shoes and getting ready to party. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll recurve into a fish storm as far as the US is concerned, but I damn sure feel for the folks in the Lesser Antilles - they just can’t seem to catch a break.
ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMMTropical Weather Outlook
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL
800 PM EDT Sat Aug 10 2024For the North Atlantic…Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:
- Near the Lesser and Greater Antilles (AL98):
Shower and thunderstorm activity is showing some signs of
organization in association with a tropical wave located roughly
midway between the Cabo Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles.
Environmental conditions appear conducive for gradual development of
this system during the next few days while it moves westward to
west-northwestward at 15 to 20 mph across the central tropical
Atlantic. A tropical depression is likely to form by the early to
middle part of next week while the system approaches and then moves
near or over the Lesser Antilles, and interests there should monitor
the progress of this system. Then, the system is forecast to move
generally west-northwestward and could approach portions of the
Greater Antilles by the middle to latter part of next week.
- Formation chance through 48 hours…medium…50 percent.
- Formation chance through 7 days…high…90 percent.