From the article, this might be rare but it has happened before: > Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and drop

From the article, this might be rare but it has happened before: > Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and dropped incredible amounts of rainfall hundreds of miles away, came in 1969 with Hurricane Camille. After making landfall in extreme southeastern Louisiana, Camille tracked over Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia before combining with a frontal boundary over Virginia and producing epic rains of up to 25 inches.