Hurricane starts ‘slapping’ North Carolina coast
Hurricane Florence’s winds began whipping coastal North Carolina yesterday as the slow-moving tempest began to unleash fierce rains that forecasters warned would cause catastrophic flooding across a wide swath of the US southeast.
The centre of Florence is expected to hit North Carolina’s southern coast today, then drift southwest before moving inland tomorrow, enough time to drop as much as 40” (1m) of rain in places, according to the National Hurricane Centre (NHC).
An estimated 10mn people live in the storm’s path, according to the US Weather Prediction Centre, and coastal businesses and homes were boarded up in anticipation.
More than 1mn people had been ordered to evacuate the coasts of the Carolinas and Virginia and thousands moved to emergency shelters, officials said.
Florence’s maximum sustained winds were clocked yesterday at 105mph (165kph) after it was downgraded to a Category 2 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the NHC.
The winds had been as high as 140mph earlier in the week but North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned against complacency because of the drop.
“Hurricane Florence was uninvited but she’s just about here anyway,” he said at a news conference. “My message today: Don’t relax. Don’t get complacent. Stay on guard. This is a powerful storm that can kill. Today the threat becomes a reality.”
The storm’s centre was 135 miles (216km) east of Wilming- ton, North Carolina, at noon EDT (1600 GMT) but tropical stormstrength winds and heavy rains already were hitting North Carolina’s Outer Banks islands.
Some 11,000 power outages had been reported yesterday morning.
The NHC also said that the threat of tornadoes was increasing as the storm neared shore.
Florence could bring winddriven storm surges of seawater as high as 13’ (4m), and NHC director Ken Graham said on Facebook that they could push in as far as two miles (3km).
Heavy rains were forecast to extend into the Appalachian mountains, affecting parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Roslyn Fleming, 56, said her granddaughter was baptised in the inlet near where she lives in the coastal community of Sea Breeze and yesterday morning she used her iPad to make a video of the scene.
“I came to video it so I can remember what it looked like before the storm because I just don’t think a lot of this is going to be here (after Florence),” she said.
Ten miles (16km) away in Wilmington, wind gusts of 20mph to 25mph (32-20kph) were stirring up frothy white caps into the Cape Fear River, although no rain had yet fallen.
Some residents enjoyed a few final hours of normalcy by ambling along the city’s riverwalk with dogs and children.
“We’re a little worried about the storm surge so we came down to see what the river is doing now,” said Linda Smith, 67, a retired nonprofit director. “I am frightened about what’s coming. We just want prayers from everyone.”
The storm will be a test of President Donald Trump’s administration less than two months before elections to determine control of Congress.
Emergency declarations were in force in Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Millions of people are expected to lose power and it could take weeks to resolve the outages.
Near the beach in Wilmington, a Waffle House restaurant, part of a chain with a reputation for staying open during disasters, had no plans to close, even if power is lost.