Hurricane Florence threatens East Coast

Florida’s government ordered at least 120,000 people from the panhandle to evacuate in preparation for Hurricane Michael’s landfall on Wednesday. The effects of the Category 4 storm will be felt not only on the state’s coast, but in Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, which are still recovering from Hurricane Florence. These effects include life-threatening winds and coastal flooding that could reach 9 to 14 feet in some areas. A Category 4 storm has never made landfall in this region of Florida.

While the conditions have caused some to flee the coast, as always, there are those who are staying put and preparing to weather the storm. Hurricane prep includes sealing windows and doors, boarding up windows, and shopping for the essentials like food, water, and batteries. This scurry for supplies often leads to chaos.

The floodwaters are finally starting to recede from Hurricane Florence, a storm that dumped upward of 35 inches of rain in places and more than 10 trillion gallons across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. The storm was a 1,000-year rain event, damaging thousands of structures, including toxic animal waste containment sites, which sent bacteria and hazardous chemicals into the water. At least 50 people died as a result of Florence and damages estimates run as high as $22 billion.

In the aftermath of extreme weather events like Florence, there’s an increasing urgency to understand just how much climate change affected the outcome. On the one hand, climate change will never cause a single event. But there’s more and more compelling scientific evidence that global warming is providing already-strong storms like Florence with even more fuel, which in turn can lead to more damage and destruction on land.

The National Weather Service reported Thursday that the overwhelming amount of rain from Hurricane Florence over three days was a “1,000-year” event. But these once-rare events are poised to become more common as the climate changes.

Torrential downpours dropped upward of 50 inches of rain in some areas of the Carolinas as the storm made landfall and weakened. Across North Carolina, Florence dumped about 8 trillion gallons of rain, enough to fill more than 12 million Olympic swimming pools.

As the floodwaters from Hurricane Florence’s punishing rain continue to rise, an environmental health disaster is unfolding around North Carolina’s increasingly stressed hazardous waste sites, from hog manure lagoons to coal ash dumps. The flooding also forced a power plant to shut down as it breached a dam containing cooling water.

The hurricane, which downgraded to a tropical depression as it made landfall last week, drenched the southeast with a gargantuan amount of rain, as much as 50 inches in some places. The storm has killed at least 37 people, and several flooded rivers in North and South Carolina will continue rising even into next week. The National Weather Service called it a 1000-year rain event.

As we grapple with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, it’s clear that our development choices contributed to the staggering damages — estimated to be between $17 billion to 22 billion — of this extreme weather event. Now that the rain has subsided, the destruction to houses and buildings in Hurricane Florence’s path is all that remains.

Mostly, though, we’re stuck with a harder question: What to do before the next storm to prevent such losses?

CNN journalist Anderson Cooper has had it with conspiracy theories — or at least the one being propagated by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. as Hurricane Florence slams parts of the country.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted a picture of Cooper standing in waist-deep floodwater, saying that CNN’s ratings would go up if they “stop lying” to make the president look bad.

The remnants of Hurricane Florence are finally exiting the Carolinas. The region has been deluged by historic amounts of rainfall — best measured in feet in many locations — and floodwaters along rivers inland are still rising. Wilmington, North Carolina, saw nearly 27 inches of rain. Other locations saw more than 30. Sand dunes disappeared from the coast in the storm surge.

The hazards associated with this storm haven’t ended; rivers are swollen and still rising, and there’s a risk that dams could be breached. And in the meantime, we’re getting a clearer sense of its toll.

As of Saturday afternoon, more than 35 inches of rain had fallen in Surf City on the North Carolina coast. That’s an enormous amount of water to fall in two days. And the flooding isn’t over.

Florence made landfall in North Carolina on Friday morning near Wilmington as a hurricane, and then slowed down to a sluggish 2 miles per hour. It essentially stalled over the Carolinas, bringing incredible amounts of rain to the region.

You’ll probably get an emergency alert text message from President Donald Trump next week — but not to worry, it’s just a test.

On Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will do their first test of an alert system that lets the president communicate with the public in the event of a national emergency via their cellphones. More than 100 mobile carriers, including all major wireless companies, are participating in the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) test, which will take place on September 20 at 2:18 pm Eastern time.

As the first deaths from Hurricane Florence are being reported, President Donald Trump is restating his false claims that Hurricane Maria’s death toll of nearly 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico last year was inflated in order to do him political harm.

In a pair of tweets on Friday evening, Trump said the number of people estimated to have died as a result of the 2017 storm in Puerto Rico went up “like magic” and that there’s “no way” the death count is actually so high. He first surfaced this new conspiracy theory on Thursday, suggesting that Democrats had somehow inflated the death toll in order to make him look bad.

If you’ve seen the reports of record rainfall and historic flooding hitting North Carolina and South Carolina from Hurricane Florence, you might be wondering what you can do to help.

One easy way to pitch in is to give money to one or more of the many charities involved with the response and recovery. Here are some suggestions and a little guidance if you’re not sure where to start.

Hurricane Florence is dumping tons of rain on the coast of North Carolina right now, and thousands of people in the storm’s path have evacuated to safer areas.

But even those who are physically safe have something else to worry about: all the income they’ve lost.

Hurricane Florence is a powerful storm that’s expected to lash the Carolinas for days, bringing coastal flooding, high winds, and, most concerning of all, an extraordinary amount of rain.

“It cannot be emphasized enough that the most serious hazard associated with slow-moving Florence is extremely heavy rainfall, which will cause disastrous flooding that will be spreading inland through the weekend,” the National Hurricane Center warned Friday morning. Floodwaters are already rising throughout the region, and as more rain comes, they’ll only get higher.

Hurricane Florence is about a day away from landfall off the coast of North Carolina, and it poses many threats to life and property in the southeastern US. But perhaps the most dangerous threat comes from its storm surge.

The surge, or coastal flooding, tends to be the deadliest aspect of hurricanes. As wind from the storm pushes water onshore several feet above the normal tide, it can trap people in their homes, wash away entire houses, and make rescue missions harrowing and slow.

In late August 2005, hurricane Katrina was moving its way across the Gulf of Mexico. It was classified as a Category 3 storm. Dangerous, but in a region with a long history of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, hardly something residents hadn’t seen before. Or so it seemed. Katrina was only one day away from the Louisiana coast when the mayor of New Orleans issued an evacuation order. Unfortunately, it was too late.

The sea level had already risen, in a phenomenon called storm surge. Water rapidly rose up against the city’s levees, a series of walls designed to keep the area from flooding. Before Katrina made landfall, the levees broke. A wall of water rushed into the city, trapping thousands. What followed was one of the worst natural disasters in US history.

Earlier in the week, forecasters were warning that Hurricane Florence had the potential to hit North Carolina as a Category 4 storm, with 140 mph winds. Now it’s looking like Florence will, in terms of wind speed, be a more modest storm, with 100 to 120 mph winds, a Category 2.

But do not take that to mean Florence will be a weak storm. “The threat to life from storm surge and rainfall will not diminish, and these impacts will cover a large area regardless of exactly where the center of Florence moves,” the National Hurricane Center warns.

Hurricane Florence is heading to the Carolinas and Virginia, and is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge and coastal flooding, punishing rains, and high winds. The storm is forecasted to slow down as it approaches landfall Friday, brining with it a massive amount of rain. Communities along the coast are evacuating in preparation. The most dangerous aspect of a hurricane is often the storm surge, which is expected to top 9 or 13 feet in some areas. (View a storm surge warning risk map for the storm here.)

Luckily, there’s still time to prepare. This map below charts the course the storm has taken so far and NOAA’s National Hurricane Center’s best available forecast for where it’s heading. The map will update automatically when new forecasts are published. Regardless of its exact category rating, it will remain a dangerous situation.

With Hurricane Florence looming, South Carolina officials this week ordered evacuations in parts of the state, including Dorchester County. But some people are being left behind — specifically, at least 650 prison inmates at MacDougall Correctional Institution.

South Carolina Department of Corrections spokesperson Dexter Lee told Vice News, “Previously, it’s been safer to stay in place with the inmates rather than move to another location.”

President Donald Trump says the federal government is “ready” for Hurricane Florence, whose Category 4 winds are barreling toward Virginia and the Carolinas.

According to Trump, the government’s “incredibly successful” response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year is proof that he has everything handled.