Florence shifts farther south; 10 million people under huge storm’s watches, warnings

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- Hurricane Florence put a corridor of more than 10 million people in the cross hairs Wednesday as the monster storm closed in on the Carolinas.

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 states of emergency, and some residents who had thought they were safely out of range boarded up their homes.

The National Hurricane Center's best guess was that Florence would blow ashore as early as Friday afternoon around the North Carolina-South Carolina line, then push its rainy way westward with a potential for catastrophic inland flooding.

Florence's nighttime winds dropped to 110 mph from a high of 140 mph, and the Category 3 storm fell to a Category 2, with a further slow weakening expected as the storm nears the coast. But authorities warned it will still be an extremely dangerous storm.

"Do you want to get hit with a train or do you want to get hit with a cement truck?" said Jeff Byard, an administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Tropical storm-force winds extended 195 miles from Florence's center, and hurricane-force winds reached out 70 miles.

The National Weather Service said 5.25 million people live in areas under hurricane warnings or watches, and 4.9 million live in places covered by tropical-storm warnings or watches.

At the White House, President Donald Trump both 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.

At 10 p.m., the storm was centered 280 miles east-southeast of Wilmington, N.C., and was moving northwest at 17 mph. The hurricane center said Florence will approach the coast Friday.

Like Hurricane Harvey, which stalled over Texas in 2017, Florence could linger over the Southeast for several days after landfall, unloading 15 to 25 inches of rain and isolated amounts of up to 40 inches. Flooding from heavy rains is the second-leading cause of fatalities in tropical storms and hurricanes that make landfall.

Like a bulldozer, the storm's winds and forward motion will push a tremendous amount of water onshore when it makes landfall. The storm surge, or rise in water above normally dry land at the coast, could reach up to more than a story high, or 13 feet, if the maximum surge coincides with high tide.

"North Carolina, my message is clear," Gov. Roy Cooper said at a briefing Wednesday. "Disaster is at the doorstep and is coming in."

As of Tuesday, more than 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to clear out. Airlines had canceled nearly 1,000 flights and counting. Home Depot and Lowe's activated emergency response centers to get generators, trash bags and bottled water to stores before and after the storm. The two hardware chains said they sent in about 1,100 trucks.

Duke Energy, the nation's No. 2 power company, said Florence could knock out electricity to three-quarters of its 4 million customers in the Carolinas, and blackouts could last for weeks. Workers are being moved in from the Midwest and Florida to help in the storm's aftermath, it said.

It is unusual for storms as strong as Florence to barrel straight at the North Carolina coast. The last Category 4 hurricane to do so was Hazel in 1954. That storm was famous for its destructiveness. Most storms that reach the coastal United States tend to track farther south, hitting Florida or entering the Gulf of Mexico.

Storms that do follow a path across the Atlantic similar to Florence generally tend to turn north before they reach the coast. This year, though, an atmospheric phenomenon known as a blocking high spun off from the jet stream "like a swirl in the river that separates itself from the main flow," has prevented Florence from making that turn, said Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University.

Computer models of exactly what the storm might do varied. In contrast to the hurricane center's official projection, a highly regarded European model had the storm turning southward off the North Carolina coast and blowing ashore near the Georgia-South Carolina line.

Reacting to the possibility of a more southerly track, Georgia Gov. 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," 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 need to prepare again for the worst just in case.

"We've had our lessons. Now it might be time for the exam," he said.

EVACUATE OR RIDE IT OUT

Many residents in the Carolinas were making last-minute decisions about whether to evacuate or ride the storm out.

In Nags Head, N.C., the mayor, Ben Cahoon, said he and his wife had decided to stay despite mandatory evacuation orders -- one from the state and one locally that he helped put in place.

"There are folks like myself, who have lived here a long time, who sort of have a sense about these things," he said of Nags Head, a small beach town in the Outer Banks. "Whether that's entirely rational or not, that's something else."

Cahoon, 56, said he is staying for both personal and professional reasons -- a desire to be home to be available in case he can help.

"We don't really strong-arm people to get out," he said, "but we want them to understand the risks they are taking by staying."

In Myrtle Beach, Chris Pennington watched the forecasts and tried to decide when to leave as he boarded up his home.

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

Their entire neighborhood evacuated in Wilmington, N.C., but David and Janelle Garrigus planned to ride out Florence at their daughter's one-bedroom apartment in Charlotte. Unsure of what they might find when they return home, the couple went shopping for a recreational vehicle.

"We're just trying to plan for the future here, not having a house for an extended period of time," David Garrigus said.

Farther inland, residents who remembered the flooding from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Hugo in 1989 were hoping to avoid a third catastrophe.

"We are actually moving stuff as much as we can out of the house," said Regina Cobb, 50, of Princeville. "The town hasn't recovered from the last time. There are still a lot of people who haven't moved back home."

"If it floods this time, I think my family is out," she said. "We've been discussing this the past couple of days. This is God's way of saying: 'It's time to do something different.'"

Forecasters worried the storm's damage will be all the worse if it lingers on the coast. 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 vacationers Chris and Nicole Roland put off their departure from North Myrtle Beach to get the maximum amount of time on the sand. Most other beachgoers were long gone.

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

Information for this article was contributed by Jeffrey Collins, Seth Borenstein, Jennifer Kay, Gary Robertson, Meg Kinnard, Skip Foreman, Jeff Martin, and Jay Reeves of The Associated Press; by Jason Samenow, Ann Gerhart, Joel Achenbach and Brian McNoldy of The Washington Post; and by Amy Harmon of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/13/2018