Another day, another couple of totally expected track wobbles. Minor and not shifting impacts all that much.
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1/
Florence is HUGE. Put the eye in Columbia SC and the cloud shield would darken the skies from Manteo to Murphy. Plenty of wind in there, but that’s not the main story!
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2/
Yes, 40+ mph winds extend some 200 mikes from the center. And yes, the storm weakened in terms of wind.
But that’s not what Florence will go down in the record books for, friends. The winds will play second fiddle to the water - both storm surge and inland flooding.
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But that’s not what Florence will go down in the record books for, friends. The winds will play second fiddle to the water - both storm surge and inland flooding.
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We’ve read this story before. We know how it plays out. And it’s not pretty.
Which is why I’m heartened to see so many folks both at the coast and inland really taking this one seriously.
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Which is why I’m heartened to see so many folks both at the coast and inland really taking this one seriously.
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We’re not out of the woods here in the Triangle. Even though the overal track picture looks better for us than it did a couple of days ago, we’re still looking at a couple months’ worth of rain in a few days. Flooding remains likely.
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5/
And it won’t take much wind to knock over some trees, causing travel disruptions and power outages. The max gusts may not be all that bad, but the duration of 30-45 mph wind plus rains soaking the ground will give us plenty to sweat out.
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The good news, if there is any, is that there appears to be some kind of endgame that eventually takes #Florence away. It’s going to take a few days to happen, but for much of the last 48 hours, that timeline was anything but clear.
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If you’re at the coast and you’ve lingered, you still have a few hours to get out tomorrow, but your window to leave safely is closing - fast.
If you’re inland and you have any preps, you’ve got at least part of Thursday, but it’s definitely time to button all that up.
8/
If you’re inland and you have any preps, you’ve got at least part of Thursday, but it’s definitely time to button all that up.
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Things go downhill tomorrow afternoon and evening. But from all the pictures of empty shelves, we’re more ready now than we were when this thing showed up on the scene two weeks ago.
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9/
Short of a complete collapse, Florence is going to rewrite some hurricane history in the Carolinas over the next few days. Let’s hope those revisions aren’t as extensive as we feared - and be ready to write our own response as we weather the storm and recover together.
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10/
Good luck, friends. Stay safe.
11/11
11/11
