SC prisoners evacuated due to Hurricane Florence, SCDC says

Florence was downgraded to a Category 1 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale on Thursday evening and was moving west at only 6 miles per hour (9 km/h).

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.

Over 1.5 million people have been ordered to evacuate coastal areas ahead of the storm due to the threat of severe winds and the storm surge.

Hurricane Florence’s economic impact will likely be less than Hurricane Harvey’s, because it’s bearing down on smaller cities.

On the forecast track, the center of Florence will move over the southwestern Atlanta Ocean between Bermuda and the Bahamas today, and approach the coast of North Carolina or SC on Thursday or Friday, and move slowly near the coastline through Saturday.

Coweta County residents can breathe a brief a small sigh of relief, at least on Thursday morning.

Hurricane Florence is being called a “monster” storm, and the warnings have been dire.

But the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday evening that the storm is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge and rainfall to the Carolinas as it approaches the coast Thursday and Friday.

“This is going to be a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast”, said Jeff Byard, the associate administrator for response and recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

An outsized Hurricane Florence early on Thursday crept closer to the U.S. East Coast, packing tropical storm-force winds across hundreds of miles that threaten the region with potentially catastrophic flooding and torrential rain.

It is becoming more certain that Florence will bring a risky storm surge to the Carolina coast and life-threatening flooding farther inland. Rising water levels could leave coastal parts of North Carolina under 9 feet of water, the National Hurricane Center’s director, Ken Graham, told CBS News on Tuesday.

As it nears the coast, the storm’s forward motion will slow to a crawl, but the winds and rain will continue full-strength. Utility companies said millions were expected to lose power and restoring it could take weeks.

If anyone left out there doubts Florence’s sheer capacity to wreak havoc in the coming days, this NOAA satellite image (from former NASA scientist and Professor Marshall Shepherd) should do the convincing.