Hurricane Florence still poses grave threat despite weakened winds

WILMINGTON, N.C., (Reuters) - Hurricane Florence, growing in size despite its weakening winds yesterday, crept closer to the U.S. East Coast as disaster mobilizations expanded south from the Carolinas into Georgia to counter the threat of deadly high seas and calamitous floods.

The center of Florence, no longer classified as a major hurricane but still posing a grave threat to life and property, is expected to strike North Carolina’s southern coast on Friday, then drift southwest along the shoreline before moving inland on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked late on Wednesday night at 110 miles per hour (175 km per hour), down from a peak of 140 mph a day earlier, before Florence was downgraded to a Category 3, then a Category 2, on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of wind strength.

“While Florence has weakened below major hurricane intensity, the wind field of the hurricane continues to grow in size,” the NHC said in its latest bulletin. A long stretch of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard remained vulnerable to hurricane and tropical storm conditions, from Georgia north through the Carolinas into Virginia. And Florence remained capable of unleashing rain-fueled catastrophic flooding of rivers and low-lying areas across a wide region.

“The time to prepare is almost over,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper told a morning news conference. “Disaster is at the doorstep and it’s coming in.”