Tropical Storm Florence keeps drenching the central Carolinas and is expected to generate up to 380 millimetres of rain before it swings north over the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Valley on Monday.
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A man attached to a respiratory machine sits in a shelter run by Red Cross before Hurricane Florence comes ashore in Grantsboro, N.C., September 13, 2018.
The viral video showed Weather Channel reporter Mike Seidel in Wilmington, North Carolina, shifting his position to brace himself against the wind gusts coming at him.
Charlotte and Asheville in North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia, could be in for heavy rains as Florence plods inland.
“This is a situation where it’s not days, but possibly weeks to get the lights back on”, said Howard Fowler, Duke Energy’s incident commander for Florence.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com said Florence could dump a staggering 18 trillion gallons (68 trillion liters) of rain over a week on North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maryland. Lumberton’s manufacturing-based economy was withering for years before that, and local newspaper editor Donnie Douglas says he doesn’t know how much more suffering the traumatized residents can take.
Utility crews worked to restore electricity.
If Florence were to continue moving along its current path at the same rate, it would take roughly 189 hours, or almost eight days to move from its 11 a.m. position near Andrews, SC, to any point north of North Carolina.
“Right now we’ve rescued over 400 people”. Maximum sustained winds remained at 50 miles per hour (80 kph).
Florence was moving west-southwest at about 5 miles per hour (7 km/h), with its center located over eastern SC.
Nearly 800,000 people are reported to be without power already in North Carolina, and officials have warned restoring electricity could take days or even weeks.
The storm was expected to move across parts of southeastern North Carolina and eastern SC on Friday and Saturday, then head north over the western Carolinas and central Appalachian Mountains early next week, the NHC said. As Florence, now a tropical storm, swirls at a near-standstill over the Carolinas the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) is sending 42 firefighters to North Carolina to assist.
The National Weather Service says Hurricane Florence will meander near the coast of the Carolinas through the weekend before beginning a northward trek.
In North Carolina, at least five deaths are related to the storm – but “several others are under investigation”, Cooper said.
Homes have been washed away by storm surge or made unlivable by standing water, fallen trees or other debris. More than 360 people have been carried to safety since Thursday night amid rising waters from a river swelled by both rain and salty storm surge.
The death toll from the hurricane-turned-tropical storm climbed to at least five.
It’s not just rain in the local area that will torment Conway, forecasters warn.
Rescue team member Sgt. Nick Muhar, from the North Carolina National Guard 1/120th battalion, evacuates a young child as the rising floodwaters from Hurricane Florence threatens his home in New Bern, N.C., on Friday, Sept. 14, 2018. Some area residents described a harrowing retreat as the storm hit. Numerous states in Florence’s path have already experienced heavy rains this summer, leaving them water-logged and particularly vulnerable to flooding.
More than 20,000 people are staying in 157 emergency shelters in North Carolina, Cooper said.
SC also has a new record for rainfall in a single tropical system.
The eye moved from sea to land at Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina. “So yeah, not safe”, Ochoa said.
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President Trump signed a disaster declaration for North Carolina on Saturday, and is scheduled to visit the Carolinas to witness the recovery from Florence in person sometime next week.
