‘LIFE-THRE ATENING’ HURRICANE FLORENCE STRENGTHENS.
‘This one is different,’ governor says
Expanding in size and strengthening yet again, violent Hurricane Florence is on a beeline toward the East Coast as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane. Catastrophic flooding and destructive winds are becoming likely in the eastern Carolinas north of Charleston, where hurricane warnings were issued late Tuesday.
Forecasts project the storm to make landfall between northern South Carolina and North Carolina’s Outer Banks as a Category 3 or 4 Thursday into Friday, although shifts in the track are possible and the impact will expand great distances beyond where landfall occurs. The National Hurricane Center is warning of a triple threat in the Carolinas and Virginia, describing it as a “life-threatening storm surge” at the coast, along with “life-threatening freshwater flooding from a prolonged and exceptionally heavy rainfall event” from the coast to interior sections and “damaging hurricaneforce winds” at the coast and some distance inland. “Even if you’ve ridden out storms before, this one is different,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference, where he announced the mandatory evacuation of the state’s popular and fragile barrier islands. “It’s an extremely dangerous, lifethreatening, historic hurricane.”
Like Hurricane Harvey, which stalled over Texas in 2017, Florence could linger over the southeast for several days after landfall, unloading 37 to 50 centimetres of rain and isolated amounts up to 75 centimetres. The Hurricane Center said this is “likely” to produce catastrophic flash flooding. More than 1.5 million people have been ordered to evacuate coastal areas ahead of the storm because destructive winds and storm surge could place normally dry land under at least three metres of water.
Even before South Carolina’s mandatory evacuation order for coastal areas took effect at noon, cameras showed traffic at a crawl on the main interstate connecting Charleston and Columbia. In North Carolina, Dare County officials warned that ocean overwash already was spilling onto low-lying roads and slowing evacuations there.
Airlines began to cancel flights and Charleston International Airport in South Carolina tweeted that it expects runways to close by midnight Wednesday. In Virginia, officials said inland flooding was likely to be catastrophic and could test the James River flood walls in Richmond, the state capital. The navy commander of the Mid-Atlantic region authorized an emergency evacuation order for personnel who live in the lowlying area under mandatory evacuation, and corrections officials said they had evacuated a prison in that area. The mayor of the District of Columbia joined Maryland’s governor in declaring an emergency in the nation’s capital.
President Donald Trump has approved emergency disaster declarations for the Carolinas and Virginia, which frees up funds for relief and recovery. “We’re as ready as anybody has ever been,” he said after a briefing with FEMA administrator William “Brock” Long and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
He also cancelled campaign rallies in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and in Mississippi.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Florence was tracking westnorthwest at 28 km/h, and was about 1,260 kilometres southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina.
It is a potentially catastrophic Category 4 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 220 km/h. It is expected to keep drawing energy from the warm water and intensify to near Category 5, with winds of 253 km/h or higher.
Like a bulldozer, the storm’s winds and forward motion will push a tremendous amount of water onshore when it makes landfall. The storm surge could reach up to more than a storey high, if the maximum surge coincides at high tide. Jeff Masters, the meteorologist who writes Weather Underground’s Category 6 blog, reported a maximum surge of four to six metres is possible, which would rival heights from hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Hazel (1954).
The biggest surge should occur just to the north of where the eye of the storm comes ashore, which the Hurricane Center projects in southeast North Carolina. Many tourists and residents expressed concern Tuesday for the majestic wild horses that roam the islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. “Thinking of all of the horses as Florence approaches . ... Praying for their safety,” wrote one concerned woman. on the Facebook page of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund. “Prayers for protection from the storm for these beautiful animals & the young foals,” wrote another. Wildlife experts say they needn’t worry. Wild horses are believed to have first settled on the Outer Banks hundreds of years ago and have survived many powerful storms.
Sue Stuska, a wildlife biologist based at Cape Lookout National Seashore, where 118 wild horses live on Shackleford Banks, said the horses are highly sensitive to weather changes and instinctively know what to do in a storm. She said they go to higher ground during flooding, including the dunes, and head for shrub thickets and a maritime forest during high winds. “Naturally, they are meant to be outside and they have high ground and they have thick places to hide,” Stuska said.
“Don’t worry about them. They’ve survived for hundreds of years, and we expect that they’ll be just fine.”