Thursday updates: Hurricane Florence heads toward Carolinas
Damaging winds will soon begin to lash the Carolina coasts.
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Hurricane Florence is churning off the coast of the Carolinas as the south prepares for a hammering along its Atlantic beaches and serious flooding inland from up to 40 inches of rain. Here's the latest of what we know.
• Florence is now a Category 2 hurricane with sustained maximum winds of 100 mph, down from 110 mph earlier Thursday. But don't be fooled: The greatest danger will be flooding rains and storm surge, forecasters say. That's because Florence will slow as it nears the coast and pushes inland. The result, according to the National Hurricane Center, will be "life-threatening, catastrophic" flash flooding, particularly in the Carolinas, where more than 20 inches of rain is predicted around the border of South and North Carolina.
• Florence's eye is expected to make landfall Friday morning near Wilmington, N.C., as a Category 2 hurricane and could become a Category 1 hurricane with winds up to 80 mph for a time over land. Hurricane and storm surge warnings have been posted from Edisto Beach, S.C., to the Virginia-North Carolina border.
• Florence has hurricane-force winds extending outward up to 80 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds reaching outward up to 195 miles. Storm surge was already sending water across North Carolina's barrier islands Thursday morning.
• About 10 million people are in the path of the storm and time has run out for coastal evacuations. Some people have discounted the warnings because the storm weakened from a Category 4 earlier this week to a Category 2. Meteorologists say those people are putting their lives at risk.
• There could be isolated amounts of up to 40 inches of rainfall in some areas from coastal North Carolina into far northeastern South Carolina. Six to 15 inches of rain is projected for other parts of South and North Carolina into southwest Virginia.
• Forecasters says the remnants of Florence likely will not track near the Philadelphia region until late Tuesday or early Wednesday, when anywhere from one to three inches of rain could fall. Philadelphia, meanwhile, will see some pleasant weather this weekend, with sun peeking out at times. At the Shore, minor coastal flooding is possible during high tide Friday.