AMN / WEB DESK
File photo
A day after tropical Storm Florence landed as a hurricane left at least 13 people dead – including a baby and about a million without power on the East Coast. Florence’s relentless rain is flooding parts of the Carolinas and promises even more for days, officials said Saturday.
A Category 1 hurricane when it plowed ashore near Wilmington, N.C., early Friday, Florence was downgraded to a tropical storm hours later and the damage of the first blow along the coast was not as bad as many had feared.
But an early Saturday report from the National Hurricane Center had it crawling west at two miles per hour with maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour. It is likely to mow a path northwest across nearly all of South Carolina, promising a brutal weekend of heavy rain and potential flooding for millions. Storm conditions could also lead to tornadoes and landslides, officials said.
“The flood danger from this storm is more immediate today than when it made landfall,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Saturday.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds have lessened — to 40 mph — but the winds extend up to 160 miles from the storm’s center with gusts of 44 mph being felt at Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina, according to the NHC.
Latest developments on strom Florence according to New York Times are-
• The center of the storm is expected to head west through South Carolina before turning north on Sunday.
• Rainfall in North Carolina has broken a state record, according to preliminary reports from the National Weather Service. More than 30 inches were recorded in Swansboro, N.C. The previous record of 24 inches was set in 1999, when Hurricane Floyd pounded the region.
• The 12 storm-related deaths include a mother and child who were killed after a tree fell on their home in Wilmington; Amber Dawn Lee, 61, a mother of two who was driving in Union County, S.C., when her vehicle hit a tree in the road; three people in Duplin County, N.C., who died because of flash flooding on the roadways; and a couple who died in a house fire in Cumberland County, N.C.
• Local, state and federal officials are rushing to rescue people stranded in half-submerged homes across the region. So are many volunteers, including Tray Tillman, 26, a construction foreman who was part of a makeshift rescue flotilla that has plucked hundreds of stranded people from attics, second-floor bedrooms, church vestibules and crumbling decks.
• View photos of the storm and its effects on areas across the Carolinas.
• The New York Times is providing unlimited access to our coverage of Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut. Catch up on the rest of our coverage.
https://www.heraldonline.com/news/state/north-carolina/article218483975.html