Hurricane Florence weakens but remains a 'monster'

Hurricane Florence has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm, but is still considered to be extremely dangerous and a threat to life remains.

Faced with new forecasts that showed a more southerly threat, Georgia’s governor joined his counterparts in Virginia and North and South Carolina in declaring a state of emergency, and some residents who had thought they were safely out of range boarded up their homes.

However, on Wednesday evening, North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper warned that Florence remained "a monster" and was "not one to ride out".

The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) predicts that Florence will hit the US coast around the North Carolina-South Carolina border as early as Friday afternoon.

However, there are fears that Florence could stall when it makes landfall, increasing the chances of flooding from rain and storm surges.

The NHC believes Florence will then push westwards, with the potential for catastrophic inland flooding.

Florence was downgraded to a Category 2 storm overnight on Wednesday, after sustained wind speeds fell to 110mph from a high of 140mph, with a further weakening expected as the storm nears the coast.

Despite the downgrade, authorities warn that Florence could still prove to be an extremely dangerous hurricane.

But authorities warned it will still be an extremely dangerous hurricane.

An administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that while Florence had slowed, it was still incredibly powerful: “Do you want to get hit with a train or do you want to get hit with a cement truck?”, Jeff Byard asked.

Currently, tropical storm-force winds extended 195 miles from Florence’s centre, and hurricane-force winds reached out 70 miles.

President Donald Trump touted the Government’s readiness and urged people to get out of the way of Florence: “Don’t play games with it. It’s a big one,” he said.

Early on Thursday, the storm was centred 235 miles east-south-east of Wilmington, North Carolina, moving north-west at 17mph.

The hurricane centre said Florence will approach the coast on Friday and linger for a while before rolling ashore.

As of Tuesday, more than 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to evacuate, and airlines had cancelled around 1,000 flights.

Hardware chains Home Depot and Lowe’s activated emergency response centres and sent 1,100 lorries to get generators, rubbish bags and bottled water to shops before and after the storm.

Power company Duke Energy said Florence could knock out electricity to three-quarters of its four million customers in the Carolinas, and outages could last for weeks.

Workers are being brought in from the Midwest and Florida to help in the storm’s aftermath, it said.

Boarding up his home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Chris Pennington watched the forecasts and tried to decide when to leave.

“In 12 or 18 hours, they may be saying different things all over again,” he said.

Computer models of exactly what the storm might do vary, adding to the uncertainty.

In contrast to the hurricane centre’s official projection, a highly regarded European model had the storm turning southward off the North Carolina coast and coming ashore near the Georgia-South Carolina line.

Reacting to the possibility of a more southerly track, Georgia governor Nathan Deal declared an emergency but did not immediately order any evacuations.

“I ask all Georgians to join me in praying for the safety of our people and all those in the path of Hurricane Florence,” Mr Deal said.

The shift in the projected track spread concern to areas that once thought they were relatively safe.

In South Carolina, close to the Georgia line, Beaufort County emergency chief Neil Baxley told residents they should prepare again for the worst just in case.

“We’ve had our lessons. Now it might be time for the exam,” he said.

In Virginia, where about 245,000 residents were ordered to evacuate low-lying areas, officials urged people to remain away from home despite forecast changes showing Florence’s path largely missing the state.

Their entire neighborhood evacuated in Wilmington, North Carolina, David and Janelle Garrigus planned to ride out Florence at their daughter’s one-bedroom apartment in Charlotte, around 200 miles inland.

Unsure of what they might find when they return home, the couple said they believed they might not be able to return home for some time.

“We’re just trying to plan for the future here, not having a house for an extended period of time,” Mr Garrigus said.

Melody Rawson evacuated her first-floor apartment in Myrtle Beach and arrived at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, around 350 miles away, to camp for free with three other adults, her disabled son, two dogs and a pet bird.

“We hope to have something left when we get home,” she said.

The trend is “exceptionally bad news,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy, since it “smears a landfall out over hundreds of miles of coastline, most notably the storm surge”.

With South Carolina’s beach towns more in the bull’s-eye because of the shifting forecast, Ohio tourists Chris and Nicole Roland put off their departure from North Myrtle Beach to get the maximum amount of time on the sand, but many had already heeded advice and left.

“It’s been really nice,” Nicole Roland said. “Also, a little creepy. You feel like you should have already left.”