Hurricane Florence’s wind speeds may be a little bit lower now that she has made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, but she will still bring life-threatening storm surge flooding, catastrophic flash flooding and prolonged and significant river flooding. The Wilmington, North Carolina, airport reported gusts of up to 105 miles per hour and sustained winds of 90 miles per hour.
New Bern, North Carolina, saw major flooding Thursday night and more than 200 rescues were made of people who got trapped in their cars or had to climb onto roofs. More than 150 people are still waiting to be rescued.
If you want to see what the ocean looks and sounds like you can check the live cam on the Frying Pan Tower on Frying Pan Shoals off the North Carolina coast near Southport, which was very close to where the storm made landfall.
NOTE: The Frying Pan Shoals camera connection was knocked out by the storm.
The storm has grown in size and experts predict she will do more damage with water than wind, especially when inland rainwaters meet up with storm surges from the sea.
The National Hurricane Center warned that flooding from both the storm surge and rainfall could be “catastrophic.”
Until conditions improve and it’s safe to venture outside, the best thing to do is to stay indoors. It’ll be hard to take your mind off the bad storms the ocean sometimes brings us, but you can distract yourself by reading this Kim Kavin story about whales, which is a finalist for the 2018 Folio Awards. It’s a reminder that sometimes the ocean also brings us beautiful things.
