Hurricane Florence Still Set To Unleash Terrible Disaster On The Carolinas

Hurricane Florence as seen from space. Photo via Reuters.

Hurricane Florence continues to churn menacingly in the Atlantic Ocean this morning. The Carolinas are still in its crosshairs, and all indications are that unfortunately, this is going to be very, very bad.

If you were heartened by reports that Florence weakened a little bit overnight, don't be. It's still an incredibly dangerous hurricane, and there's no reason why it can't restrengthen.

When you get a hurricane as big and bad as Florence, the eye of the storm often collapses and re-forms.

During these so-called eyewall replacement cycles, the strength of the storm will fluctuate. Hurricanes like Florence will weaken a bit when the thunderstorms surrounding the eye of the storm rearrange themselves. Once the storms are done fixing themselves up, the hurricane re-strenghtens.

Worse, these cycles often make the area of strong winds in a hurricane cover a larger area, which would eventually make the wind damage and storm surge worse and more widespread once the hurricane makes landfall.

Forecasts are consistent that Florence will probably come ashore somewhere in North or South Carolina. Don't pay too much attention to exact spot where Florence will land. The whole region is in trouble, regardless of whether Florence makes landfall a couple dozen miles north or south of where it's currently expected to.

The projected path of Hurricane Florence continuies to
consistently target the Carolinas. 

The bottom line is that the Carolinas and some surrounding areas are really screwed,  and the people who live down there know it. Already,  more than 1.5 million people have been wisely told to evacuate inland and away from rivers that will inevitably flood.

Although the core of the hurricane isn't expected to hit land until Thursday night, Florence is already causing some problems.

The evacuation of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, those barrier islands that jut out into the Atlantic, was slowed because high surf was washing across some of the roads that serve as evacuation routes.

Reuters reported that traffic was backed up for nine miles because of this. But at least the traffic jam was a sign that people are taking Florence seriously and are getting out of Dodge.

Even though the hurricane hasn't hit yet, it's still disruptive. What do you do with 1.5 million people who are fleeing inland? And fleeing inland isn't necessarily good enough. You want people to move to places that won't be affected by river flooding. Some are going all the way to place like Tennessee and Kentucky or even more distant places to get away from the storm.

Echoing the disaster with Hurricane Hugo in 1989, South Carolina officials are blocking eastbound lanes of Interstate 26. Both east and westbound lanes will become all westbound, which will help facilitate evacuations.

By the way, if you know anybody in the Carolinas, or Virginia or anyplace else threatened by Florence, tell them to heed all warnings and alerts. If they're ordered to evacuate and they don't, tell them you will hate them, disinherit them or whatever it takes to get them to move.

The wind and storm surge are going to be immensely destructive with Florence. Winds could easily gust past 130 mph along the coast. Storm surges could reach six to 12 feet. More than 750,000 homes are in the path of this potential storm surge. Coastal areas in the Carolinas are flat, so storm surge flooding can extend inland quite away.

Speaking of inland, flooding in the interior of the Carolinas and surrounding areas still look to be the biggest problem with Florence.   There are still signs that Florence will slow down or stall once it gets inland. The wind with the storm will quickly diminish, but the rain will keep pouring down.

The benchmark for how bad a hurricane can get in the Carolinas is
Hurricane Hazel in 1954. This photo shows what Hurricane
Hazel did to the North Carolina coast. 

There's the potential for one to two feet of rain. A few computer models hint at as much as 40 inches of rain, the amount of rain we in Vermont normally get over the course of a year.

Some of these downpours will bump up against the mountains in the western parts of North and South Carolina, and maybe Virginia and West Virginia.

The wet air rising up and over the mountains would intensify rainfall rates, sending walls of water down the slopes of the mountains and into populated areas.

Even if most of the rain falls in North Carolina, people in South Carolina are still screwed because most of the rivers enter South Carolina from the north.

Heavy rains could also spread into saturated areas of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, causing another round of serious flooding there.

Hurricane Florence is even a national security risk. There are military installations in low lying areas around Norfolk, Virginia and along Chesapeake Bay, and storm surge flooding has the potential to be especially destructive there.

As Reuters notes, Camp Lejeune, the largest U.S Marine Corp base on the East Coast, is on the beach near Wilmington, North Carolina.  Navy ships are leaving the port in Norfolk, Virginia ahead of Florence

This will certainly be a life-threatening, and very expensive disaster. It's something the United States doesn't need, given the horrible hurricane season last year, and the parade of floods, wildfires and storms that have continually raked the nation in recent months and years.