Hurricane Florence is churning toward the East Coast, expected to become a life-threatening major hurricane. Here’s what’s in store for the D. C. region.
WASHINGTON — Hurricane Florence is fast becoming a powerful and dangerous storm, poised to strike the southeast U. S. on Thursday night. Strong winds, storm surge, and life-threatening flooding are in store for the East Coast into early next week. Here’s the latest on Florence, what the D. C. area can expect, and how officials are responding to the storm.
For the latest official information on Florence, consult the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, and your local authorities.
At 5 a.m., Category 2 Hurricane Florence packed winds of 105 miles per hours over the open Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center said the storm was expected to rapidly intensify on Monday, churning over unusually warm waters and headed into a more favorable atmosphere.
Satellite images on Monday morning showed Florence had formed an eye, inside a ring of towering thunderstorms — a sign, forecasters said, that the storm is about to get a lot stronger and bigger.
The current forecast calls for Florence to spin up into a dangerous Category 3 major hurricane with winds over 115 miles per hour as soon as Monday evening. The projected path is honing in on a Carolinas landfall around Thursday night — though forecasters cautioned it’s still too far out to know for certain exactly where Florence could come ashore or precisely how strong the storm will be.
Still, the outlook calls for Florence to be an extremely powerful, high-end Category 4 storm with winds up to 150 miles per hour as it nears landfall around Thursday night.
According to the official forecast, there’s about a 30 percent chance that the D. C. area could see at least tropical storm force winds of over 40 miles per hour from Florence. If that does pan out, those winds would most likely arrive late Thursday night.
D. C. is unlikely to experience hurricane-force winds, since the storm will lose its punch after it makes landfall hundreds of miles to the south. For the Virginia, Maryland, and D. C. regions, it’s widespread flooding that’s fast becoming a concern.
Although it’s still too far out to know for certain what the impacts on the area will be, computer models are flirting with the idea that Florence could slow down drastically over land.
That has the potential to bring persistent tropical downpours to much of Virginia up into D. C. from Friday into early next week. The ground is already saturated from days of rain by a separate weather system.
NOAA’s Monday morning GFS model highlighted the potential for almost a foot of rainfall throughout Virginia and into Maryland, lasting from late Friday through next Sunday.
That said, the latest run of the European model brings Florence ashore farther south, and moves it more inland — a path that would bring less rain to D. C.
“At this time, and as we always say with hurricanes, the forecast still has time to change,” said NBC Washington meteorologist Sheena Parveen. “One thing that has remained consistent on both models is an area of high pressure over New England when Florence nears land. This would buffer it to our South and keep the Carolinas in the path.”
Florence could bring tons of rain to a region that’s already soaked from days of foul weather. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam joined North and South Carolina in declaring a state of emergency on Saturday, allowing officials to start mobilizing a storm response.
The biggest threats for the area are coastal and inland flooding. Areas near the Maryland’s Monocacy, Potomac and Susquehanna rivers are vulnerable to flooding, and Fells Point and downtown Annapolis are prone to coastal floods. All these areas, officials urged, should be keep an eye on the forecast.
A hurricane’s impacts can be far-reaching, no matter where the storm actually hits. Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for Virginia’s emergency management office, cautioned of the potential for “massive flooding” throughout the state.
He added that Virginia’s deadliest tropical cyclone on record, 1969’s Camille, killed 150 people through flooding alone — even though the storm made landfall in Mississippi.
In Maryland, officials were especially concerned about rivers spilling over their banks, on top of flooding in low-lying urban areas along Chesapeake Bay, including Baltimore and Annapolis.
“Our ground’s already saturated,” said Edward McDonough, an spokesman with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. “It could create heavy amounts of rain anywhere from western Maryland to the Eastern Shore, the worst areas are going to depend on the final track of the storm.”
In a tweet, D. C. officials asked residents to be “proactive” in stocking up on supplies and reviewing emergency plans:
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