“Roads Turn To Rivers” As Florence Reaches Carolina Coast
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 09/13/2018
Update (11 am ET): As Hurricane Florence speeds toward the Carolina coastline, the hurricane force winds and torrential rain are already wreaking havoc in the Outer Banks, transforming downtown Cape Hatteras into a raging river of floodwater.
Despite the NHC’s decision to downgrade Florence to a Category 2 storm on Thursday, residents should understand that these categorizations are based solely on wind speed. The storm is still expected to dump as much as 40 inches of rain in the affected areas, and could whip up storm surges up to 13 feet high.
According to the most recent measures from the NHC, Florence was still about 160 miles southeast of Wilmington, NC and is expected to make landfall early Friday. But hurricane conditions are expected to start hammering the coast on Thursday night.
Meanwhile, analysts say Florence’s large wind field will only add to the damages as the storm moves inland.
“You’re going to have damaging winds for a longer period of time,” senior hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart said in an update from the NHC. “So instead of maybe 120 mph winds for 30 minutes, you might end up with 90-100 mph winds for a couple of hours, or three or four hours. And that will produce a lot of damage as well as prolong the beach erosion.”
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