NC Officials Urging Residents To Prepare For Possible Cat 4 Hurricane Florence

According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a Category 4 storm means ‘Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. He estimated that about one million people will be affected by order, including residents and visitors.

“The fact that this storm and the hurricane modeling has been so consistent over the past few days, we do know we’re in the bullseye for the storm”, said Cooper.

SC has seen just three such storms – the last in 1989, with expets warning the latest is likely to wreck houses, snap trees and leave hardest hit areas uninhabitable for months. Forecasters said Florence was expected to become an extremely risky major hurricane sometime Monday and remain that way for days.

“The last Atlantic hurricane to intensify as rapidly as far north as Florence’s current location is Hurricane Humberto (2007)”. Residents should continue preparing for the likelihood of direct impacts from the storm, which could include intense flooding, rainfall, damaging winds, large and risky surf and storm surge. People were told to prepare to evacuate communities up and down a stretch of coastline already identified as particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change.

Evacuations have begun in Dare County, and targeted evacuations along the Neuse, Tar, and Lumber rivers have been considered, said Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry.

“We are preparing for the worst, and of course hoping for the best”, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said, adding that his declaration would allow state agencies to deploy assets quickly to the coast.

“If I could explain it with goal posts, the farthest south I’d go is Savannah, Georgia and the farthest north is Cape Hatteras off the uppermost coast of North Carolina”.

Experts said residents in the Caribbean – including Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas – and the United States mainland should stay aware of Isaac’s path beyond the Lesser Antilles.

“We are just going to do everything we can here to get everything secure as possible and then give the rest to God and see what happens”, one resident said.

The eye of the storm is expected to fall on Wilmington, North Carolina. Two other storms also are churning in the Atlantic. “We are taking Hurricane Florence seriously”.

The 2018 hurricane season blew into high gear on Sunday.

There have been many years when multiple tropical cyclones develop in succession like a tropical Congo line dancing across the Atlantic Ocean.