As of early Wednesday morning, Hurricane Florence had weakened slightly with sustained winds of 130mph, but this is of little consequence as the track forecast now shows a dangerous stalling out near the coast, or just onshore by late Thursday or Friday morning. This will exacerbate already extremely heightened concerns about inland flooding due to torrential rainfall from Florence.
Hurricanes produce three major kinds of threats: storm surge, damaging winds, and inland flooding from rainfall. Most hurricanes produce a combination of the above with varying severity, but rarely does a hurricane present all three threats at an extreme level. Florence is such a hurricane, with what the National Hurricane Center characterizes as a “life-threatening” storm surge for portions of the North and South Carolina coast and “damaging” winds for these same coastal areas. (See warning areas.)
However, probably the biggest concern with Florence is inland flooding, especially as the storm is now likely to become nearly stationary along the Carolina coast and then slowly trudge inland. Adding to these concerns is a new twist the forecast models are indicating will happen—a southwestward jog toward Georgia.
This should only amplify rainfall totals as the storm’s core remains offshore, with access to warm Atlantic waters to regenerate rain-making bands of precipitation. Texas saw a similar scenario in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey’s center moved just inland, and its counter-clockwise rotation allowed the storm to continually pull moisture inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
The southwest jog
As recently as Monday morning, hurricane models were forecasting a fairly conventional landfall for Florence, bringing the storm to the coast before bringing it slowly inland on a generally northwestward track. However, recent trends in the forecast models now indicate a rare—if not unprecedented for an Atlantic hurricane this far north and west—turn to the southwest before Florence resumes its west-northwest motion.
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