MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) The outer bands of wind and rain from Hurricane Florence began lashing North Carolina today as the monster storm moved in for an extended stay along the Southeastern coast, promising to drench the homes of 10 million people with immense amounts of water.
Florences top sustained wind speeds dropped from a high of 140 mph to 110 mph early today. That reduced Florence from a Category 4 to a Category 2 hurricane, but forecasters warned that the widening storm, and its likelihood of lingering around the coast day after day after day, posed a risk of surging ocean water and torrential rain.
For a meandering storm, the biggest concern as we saw with Harvey is the huge amount of rainfall, said Chris Landsea, chief of tropical analysis and forecast branch at the National Hurricane Center.
As of 7 a.m. CDT it was centered about 170 miles east-southeast of Wilmington, North Carolina and about 220 miles east-southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, moving northwest at 12 mph. Hurricane-force winds were blowing 80 miles from its center, and tropical-storm-force winds reached up to 195 miles from the eye.
The hurricane centers best guess was that Florences eye would blow ashore as early as Friday afternoon around the North Carolina-South Carolina line. Then, it will likely hover along the coast Saturday, pushing up to 13 feet of storm surge and dumping water on both states. The forecast calls for as much as 40 inches of rain over seven days along the coast, with the deluge continuing even as the center of the storm slogs away over the Appalachian Mountains.
The result: catastrophic inland flooding that could swamp homes, businesses, farm fields and industrial sites.
About 5.25 million people live in areas under hurricane warnings or watches, and 4.9 million more live in places covered by tropical storm warnings or watches, the National Weather Service said.
Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters said Florence eventually could strike as a Category 1 with winds less than 100 mph, but thats still enough to cause at least $1 billion in damage. Water kills more people in hurricanes than wind, and the rain and storm surge will make Florence extremely dangerous.
President Donald Trump both touted the governments readiness and urged people to get out of the way. Dont play games with it. Its a big one, he said at the White House.
This morning, President Trump rejected the official conclusion that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico from last year’s Hurricane Maria, arguing without evidence that the number was wrong and calling it a plot by Democrats to make him “look as bad as possible.”
Trump visited the island in early October to assess the situation amid widespread criticism over the recovery efforts.
“When I left the island, after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3,000,” Trump tweeted.
He added: “This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico.”
As for Hurricane Florence, its unclear exactly how many people fled, but more than 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to clear out. Airlines canceled nearly 1,000 flights and counting. Home Depot and Lowes activated emergency response centers to get generators, trash bags and bottled water to stores before and after the storm. The two hardware chains said they sent in a total of around 1,100 trucks.
Duke Energy, the nations No. 2 power company, said Florence could knock out electricity to three-quarters of its 4 million customers in the Carolinas, and outages could last for weeks. Workers are being brought in from the Midwest and Florida to help in the storms aftermath, it said.
