Hurricane Florence downgraded to Category 2, still considered risky

Here are some of the best images of Hurricane Florence by Gerst and Ricky Arnold, a fellow NASA astronaut who’s also living on board the ISS.

“This amount of weakening was not anticipated”, he said.

‘And that’s saying a lot given the impacts we’ve seen from Hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd and Matthew.

With the storm’s fierce wind and rain threatening numerous state’s cash crops, farmers were working around the clock to harvest as much corn and tobacco as they could.

The National Weather Service said 5.25 million people live in areas under hurricane warnings or watches, and 4.9 million live in places covered by tropical storm warnings or watches.

“It does look a bit similar to Harvey in a sense that it goes roaring into shore and then comes to a screeching stop”, said MIT meteorology professor and hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel.

The Category 4 storm was expected to start hitting the North and SC coasts sometime Thursday or Friday, and should make landfall near Wilmington, N.C., early Saturday morning, according to the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, concerned the storm would bring devastation south, issued an emergency declaration for all 159 counties in his state.

Parts of North Carolina are expected to get 13 centimetres of rain in the coming days.

The storm is 385 miles southeast of Raleigh and is moving northwest at 17 mph. Although the latest tracks suggest that the center of the storm will pass to our south, we’ll still likely feel some effects as early as Thursday.

“We have extra manpower on the road”, Vest said.

“This is no ordinary storm, and people could be without power for a very long time – not days but weeks”, Fountain said on a call with reporters, according to Bloomberg.

If Florence continues on its projected path, it will make landfall along the coast late Thursday.

If winds get too strong, officers will be pulled off the roads.

“Storms like that don’t usually make it that far west”.

Lemuel Sloan of Jacksonville, says he rode out Hurricane Hazel in 1954 from a flat-bottomed ship just outside of Puerto Rico while he was serving in the Marine Corps.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses could be flooded in North Carolina alone, Governor Cooper warned.

And during last year’s Hurricane Irma, officials said 12 people died in Florida’s Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills after temperatures in the nursing home rose to 99 degrees. As of Wednesday evening, the surf was already picking up. “In the past, it’s been safer to leave them there”, a state department of corrections spokesman said.

Marshall: When should we now expect landfall along the coast?

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said the hurricane poses serious threats to crops that are just starting to be harvested.