East Coast: 5.4 million people are under a watch or warning. » 16A Watching in Colorado: Researchers in Boulder and Fort Collins are keeping an eye on Hurricane Florence. »
R A LE I GH, N .C.» The National Weather Service says more than 5.4 million people live in areas now under hurricane warnings or watches on the U.S. East Coast.
Another 4 million people are under a tropical storm watch. Assorted bad weather advisories stretched from Florida to Maine on Tuesday evening.
Those facing the most serious threat are in the Carolinas, as Category 4 Hurricane Florence barrels toward the coast, with an expected landfall Friday.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tuesday that a hurricane warning had been issued from South Santee River, South Carolina, to Duck, North Carolina, and the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds.
A tropical storm watch has been issued from north of the North CarolinaVirginia border to Cape Charles Light, Va., and for the Chesapeake Bay south of New Point Comfort.
Motorists streamed inland on highways converted to oneway evacuation routes Tuesday as the hairraising storm took dead aim at the Carolinas with 140 mph winds and potentially ruinous rains.
Florence was expected to blow ashore late Thursday or early Friday, then slow down and wring itself out for days, unloading 1 to 2½ feet of rain that could cause flooding well inland and wreak environmental havoc.
Forecasters and politicians pleaded with the public to take the warnings seriously and minced no words in describing the threat.
“This storm is a monster. It’s big and it’s vicious. It is an extremely, dangerous, lifethreatening, historic hurricane,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said.
He added: “The waves and the wind this storm may bring is nothing like you’ve ever seen. Even if you’ve ridden out storms before, this one is different. Don’t bet your life on riding out a monster.”
Some hoped for divine intervention.
“I’m prayed up and as ready as I can get,” Steven Hendrick said as he filled up gasoline cans near Conway, S.C.
President Donald Trump declared states of emergency for North and South Carolina and Virginia, opening the way for federal aid. He said the federal government is “absolutely, totally prepared” for Florence.
All three states ordered mass evacuations along the coast. But getting out of harm’s way could prove difficult.
Florence is so wide that a lifethreatening storm surge was being pushed 300 miles ahead of its eye, and so wet that a swath from South Carolina to Ohio and Pennsylvania could get deluged.
People across the region rushed to buy bottled water and other supplies, board up their homes, pull their boats out of the water and get out of town.
A line of heavy traffic moved away from the coast on Interstate 40, the main route between the port city of Wilmington and inland Raleigh. Between the two cities, about two hours apart, the traffic flowed smoothly in places and became gridlocked in others because of fenderbenders.
Only a trickle of vehicles was going in the opposite direction, including pickup trucks carrying plywood and other building materials.
Florence is the most dangerous of three tropical systems in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Isaac was east of the Lesser Antilles and expected to pass south of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba, while Hurricane Helene was moving northward away from land. Forecasters also were tracking two other disturbances.