Hurricane Florence has weakened but it will still be devastating

Residents near coastal areas like this have been given evacuation warnings, although Raleigh is a bit inland so Chantal Cooke Weaver and her family are going to remain at home to wait out the storm.

Gerst and American astronaut Ricky Arnold captured the Category 4 storm and its swirling eye up close in images posted to Twitter this morning, emphasizing its epic scale and their thoughts for people in its path. “Get prepared on the East Coast, this is a no-kidding nightmare coming for you”.

Hurricane Florence is blasting toward the Carolinas, carrying sustained winds of up to 130 miles per hour and the threat of “life-threatening storm surge and rainfall”, the National Hurricane Center says.

BMW of North America has a plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, almost 300 miles (483 km) inland from the life-threatening hurricane’s projected point of landfall on Friday, and automobile shipments were diverted.

Experts say the lagoons should be able to handle about 3 feet of rain, but hog farmers, who have been trying to pump manure out of the ponds and spray it on fields as fertilizer, aren’t convinced. “We are ready. We’re as ready as anybody’s ever been”.

“Now is the time to shelter from life-threatening wind”, the agency added.

If the storm lingers for a few days, the sheer amount of rainfall could lead to catastrophic flooding. “This is not going to be a glancing blow”, Byard explained.

“This is no ordinary storm, and people could be without power for a very long time – not days but weeks”, a president of one energy company in North Carolina said on Wednesday.

North Carolina resident Roberto Guzman carries belongings from his mobile home as he leaves Wilmington a day before the storm is due to strike.

Hurricanes are massive storm systems that form over warm ocean waters and move toward land.

Governor Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for the state of Georgia: “in light of the storm’s forecasted southward track after making landfall”.

“I ask all Georgians to join me in praying for the safety of our people and all those in the path of Hurricane Florence”, Deal said. It could stall just off the coast and then drift south along the SC coast and possibly make a landfall as a weaker system if it doesn’t make it clearly over the coast of North Carolina.

“All my staff are gone”, Thompson said. “Protection of life is the absolute highest priority and that’s what we are doing”.

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

Another commenter said: ‘That hurricane better be taking me to dinner first’.

00 hour, the Red Cross released a statement that about 1,600 people spent last night in shelters in North and SC.