Hurricane Matthew threatens the Carolinas with dangerous flooding
Rafi Letzter and Kevin Loria
hurricane matthew
(Heavy waves caused by Hurricane Matthew pound the boat docks at the Sunset Bar and Grill, in Cocoa Beach, Florida on October 7, 2016.Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Hurricane Matthew has moved on to the Carolinas and is currently hitting the South Carolina coast with powerful winds, heavy rain, and dangerous storm surge. The most intense part of the storm is expected to hover near or on the coast of South Carolina throughout Saturday, moving into North Carolina Saturday night.
The National Hurricane Center reports that Matthew is now a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 85 mph, though higher gusts are still being measured. While the storm is now somewhat less powerful than the 140-mph Category 4 monster it was Thursday, it continues to threaten severe floods in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, adding to the damage it's already caused in Florida and Georgia.
As the National Weather Service points out, decreased winds do not mean the storm is less dangerous. Storm surge and flash flooding caused by rain are responsible for more than 75% of hurricane deaths in the US.
In Savannah, the storm surge — the sea level rise and subsequent flooding due to hurricane-force winds — could break records:
Just after 2 pm Friday, footage began to come in of a major storm surge in Jacksonville, Florida. A video shared on Facebook by user Bradley Hatcher captures a particularly dramatic angle:
As the Washington Post reports, the first news of severe flooding arrived before noon on Friday. Twitter posts show dangerous floodwaters in St. Augustine and Daytona Beach. The St. Augustine sea wall has "vanished under the waves."
"The video footage is revealing that the water is coming in with extreme force," said NHC storm surge specialist Jamie Rohme in a video released on Periscope, "You can't swim in it. It can throw you up against a wall. The bottom line is here is: It is life-threatening conditions."
He added, "What's more disturbing about all this is how many people you had in mandatory evacuation zones who are not leaving," saying residents up the coast with time to evacuate should do so now.
As Al Jazeera reports, the scale of destruction in Haiti, which took a direct hit from Matthew, is devastating. The latest tallies put the death toll at 842, up from 478 just a couple of hours earlier Friday morning. That makes Matthew the deadliest natural disaster in the country since the 2010 earthquake.
Many of the deaths were in small towns on the western end of the Tiburon Peninsula, including at least 50 in the coastal town of Roche-a-Bateau and 90 more in Chantal, per Al Jazeera's report.
Floodwaters remain the most severe danger from Matthew, impacting areas not used this kind of storm. Earlier today, southern parts of the state avoided the devastation of a direct landfall. But that could change still up north and in Georgia.
Friday night, the NHC continued to warn of the potential for a life-threatening storm surge of 6 to 9 feet from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida to Edisto Beach, South Carolina, including portions of the St. Johns River. Surges of 5 to 7 feet are expected from Edisto Beach, South Carolina to Cape Fear, North Carolina. And 2 to 4 feet are possible as far north as Duck, North Carolina, and are also considered very dangerous.
Hurricane_MATTHEW 11 pm fri
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Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has been urging residents to flee areas under mandatory evacuation orders since Wednesday. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina also initiated evacuations along her state's coastline.
Tammy Smith, a resident physician in the University of Florida hospital system, described to Business Insider a controlled but hectic scene as evacuated patients arrived from low-lying medical centers along the Florida and Georgia coasts. Patients were cleared out of the intensive-care unit to make room for the sudden influx of new arrivals.
WESH 2, a local NBC News affiliate in Florida, reports that people who ignored orders to evacuate have found themselves cut off from aid as they face the worst of the storm. At least one Merritt Island family described to emergency officials that the roof of their home "just flew off."
Meteorologists are keeping an eye on Matthew as the threat of an inland wobble remains severe.
This article was updated with news of the storm surge and a new forecast map at 11 pm Friday, with new news of power outages at 3:30 pm, and with new death tolls and forecast updates at 5:04 pm.
