Path shifts: ‘Storm of a lifetime’ is headed to coastal Carolinas

An immensely powerful Hurricane Florence bearing down on East Coast was expected to stall as it crawls southward along the edge of North Carolina and South Carolina late Thursday or early Friday, bombarding the area with torrential rain, high winds and deadly storm surge until Saturday.

Hurricane winds could linger for 24 hours or more, sweeping away trees and power lines while dumping 20 to 30 inches of rain in some coastal areas, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Isolated totals of 40 inches are possible. The Category 3 storm was driving sustained winds of 125 mph and creating waves up to 83 feet, the hurricane center said, with the first tropical winds sweeping ashore before noon on Thursday.

The approach of Florence put more than 10 million people under storm watches and warnings in three states.

Along the coasts areas, more than 1 million people have been ordered to evacuate. Duke Energy warned that up to 75 percent of its 4 million customers in the Carolinas could lose power.

“This is not going to be a glancing blow,” Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Jeff Byard said. “This is going to be a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast.”

“Although slow weakening is expected to begin by late Thursday, Florence is forecast to be an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it nears the U.S. coast,” the center said in its early evening forecast Thursday.

The National Weather Service in Wilmington waned that Florence “will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast.”

The NHC stressed that tropicalstorm force winds arriving Thursday morning would make outside preparations “difficult or dangerous.”

“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the NHC bulletin warned.

The forecast Tuesday had called for a move north after hitting the coast. The track changed Wednesday, bringing Georgia into the path of the storm. Gov. Nathan Deal declared an emergency Wednesday for all 159 counties. But North Carolina remained a primary target, and Gov. Roy Cooper has ordered an unprecedented evacuation of the state’s barrier islands.

Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Postel said Florence has an unusual forecast track. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

The Wells Fargo Bank Building on Meeting Street in Charleston, S.C., is boarded up in preparation for Hurricane Florence making landfall. JACK GRUBER/USA TODAY