Webcams: Watch hurricane Florence make landfall

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned residents to be careful as the outer bands of Hurricane Florence began to hit the coast on Thursday afternoon.

Hurricane Florence churned through North Carolina on Friday, knocking out electricity for more than 900,000 customers throughout eastern North Carolina and in the state’s midsection. This means that the water level will be higher than the number of feet predicted in the storm surge.

Gibson said Friday that while she and her family were safe, she and her husband had gotten around 75 calls and texts from others asking for help.

The storm is expected to bring storm surges of up to 13 feet in parts of North Carolina and catastrophic flooding in other parts of the state and northeastern SC.

The storm’s center was about 145 miles (235 km) east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as of Thursday night.

“We still have a lot of people who are not taking this seriously”.

Despite the downgrade and a drop from a peak wind speed of 225km/h to 165km/h on Thursday, the widening storm is still posing a lethal threat due to its relatively slow travel speed – giving the system a greater amount of time to dump a deluge more than the estimated 10 million people in its path.

“Remember most storm deaths occur from drowning in fresh water, often in cars”.

Millions of people are in the path of the Category 1 storm which on Thursday evening was moving west at only 6 miles per hour (9 km/h).

But the storm still carried “very unsafe winds”, the Center added.

Roads and intersections on North Carolina’s Outer Banks barrier islands were inundated.

With more than 1,500 commercial airline flights in and out of the Carolinas canceled – and potentially many more to come – even the skies above sat empty, except for Florence’s foreboding cloud cover and rapidly strengthening rain.

At least 88 people died as a result of the storm, many of whom drowned in the floodwaters, the Department of State Health Services announced previous year.

The home was unscathed despite large trees looming overhead. The child’s father was taken to a hospital. Paramedics trying to reach her were blocked by debris. A 78-year-old man was electrocuted attempting to connect extension cords while another man died when he was blown down by high winds while checking on his hunting dogs, a county spokesman said.

And in Wilmington, North Carolina, a steady rain began to fall as gusts of winds intensified, causing trees to sway and stoplights to flicker.

A Storm Surge Watch is in effect for.

And about 46 miles north of Emerald Isle in New Bern about 150 people were waiting to be rescued from rising flood waters, WXII-TV reported. New Bern is about 32 miles north of Morehead City, North Carolina, and 101 miles southeast of Raleigh.

Scientists said it is too soon to say what role, if any, global warming played in the storm.

“I feel like the dumbest human being who ever walked the face of the earth”, he said.

About 85,000 county residents are under mandatory evacuation orders, she said. The figure for SC was 170,000.

“This storm will bring destruction to North Carolina”, Cooper said.

The shelter had been set up in a school and was offering temporary refugee from the elements to around 400 people on Thursday, although it had a capacity for up to 1,200 in the popular seaside resort.

President Donald Trump is expected to travel to areas hit by Florence next week, once it is determined his travel will not disrupt any rescue or recovery efforts, the White House said on Friday.