Hurricane Dorian raked the Carolina coast with howling, window-rattling winds and sideways rain Thursday, spinning off tornadoes and knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it pushed northward toward the dangerously exposed Outer Banks.
Leaving at least 20 people dead in its wake in the Bahamas, Dorian swept past Florida on Wednesday at a relatively safe distance, grazed Georgia overnight, and then began hugging the South Carolina-North Carolina coastline with more serious effects.
As of midday, it was a Category 2, blowing at 110 mph – a far cry from the Category 5 that mauled the Bahamas, but still dangerous. About 1 million people in the two states were warned to evacuate.
“Get to safety and stay there,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said. “This won’t be a brush-by. Whether it comes ashore or not, the eye of the storm will be close enough to cause extensive damage in North Carolina.”
At least four deaths were reported, all involving men in Florida and North Carolina who died in falls or by electrocution while trimming trees, putting up storm shutters or otherwise getting ready for the storm.
The National Hurricane Center’s projected track showed Dorian passing near or over North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Friday, lashing the thin line of islands that stick out from the U.S. coast like a boxer’s chin. Dorian was then expected to peel away from the shoreline.
“I think we’re in for a great big mess,” said 61-year-old Leslie Lanier, who decided to stay behind and boarded up her home and bookstore on Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, making sure to move the volumes 5 to 6 feet off the ground.
“We are thinking maybe we should have moved the books higher because of storm surge,” Lanier said. “But we’re kind of to the point where we can’t do much more.”
The National Hurricane Center forecast as much as 15 inches of rain for the coastal Carolinas, with flash-flooding likely.
In Charleston, S.C., a historic port city of handsome antebellum homes on a peninsula that is prone to flooding even from ordinary storms, Dorian toppled some 150 trees, swamped roads and brought down power lines, officials said, but the flooding and wind weren’t nearly as bad as feared.
Walking along Charleston’s stone battery, college student Zachary Johnson sounded almost disappointed that Dorian hadn’t done more.
“I mean, it’d be terrible if it did, don’t get me wrong. I don’t know – I’m just waiting for something crazy to happen, I guess,” said Johnson, 24.
Dorian apparently spun off at least one tornado in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., damaging several homes, and another twister touched down in the beach town of Emerald Isle, N.C., mangling and overturning several trailer homes in a jumble of sheet metal. No immediate injuries were reported.
In coastal Wilmington, North Carolina, just above the South Carolina line, heavy rain fell horizontally, trees bent in the wind and traffic lights swayed as the hurricane drew near.
At 2 p.m. EDT, Dorian was just offshore Cape Romain, S.C., about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach, moving north at 8 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended about 60 miles from its center.
By midday, coastal residents in Georgia and some South Carolina counties were allowed to return home after the storm had passed, but the threat was worsening to the north.
Hundreds of shelter animals from coastal South Carolina arrived in Delaware ahead of the storm. The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., said 200 were airlifted from shelters in danger of flooding. About 150 more were expected to arrive via land.