Hurricane Florence Is a Warning of What's to Come
Right now, Hurricane Florence is spinning toward the mid-Atlantic coast like a giant thermo-aquatic buzz saw. Hurricanes are fickle and can shapeshift at the last minute, but Florence is on track to be one of the biggest hurricanes in U.S. history, with winds that are expected to accelerate to 155 mph and a storm surge up to 15 or 20 feet. Already 1.5 million people have been evacuated from the Carolina coast, and surely more evacuation orders are to come. This is a monster storm, and it will likely have a devastating impact on the people who live in the region. And Florence is just one of three big storms that are spinning simultaneously in the Atlantic, at what is historically the peak of hurricane season.
Welcome to life on our superheated planet.
Every hurricane, like every snowflake, is unique, driven by a particular mix of ocean temperature and atmospheric circulation patterns, among other things. On cable networks, you will see a lot of images of bent-over trees and reporters standing in 100-mph-plus winds and houses with their roofs blown off. But like Hurricane Harvey, which caused massive flooding in Houston last year, water is likely to be more deadly and destructive than the wind.
Hurricanes push a lot of water in front of them as they spin along. With Florence, the angle of approach is coming straight in at 90 degrees, which will push a big wall of water in front of it. As Andrew Freedman at Axios points out, the Carolinas are uniquely vulnerable to storm-surge flooding because the continental shelf extends far offshore, by about 50 miles, creating a large shallow area that enables a storm to build up water to great heights. (Other hurricane-prone areas, like southern Florida, have a steeper slope offshore, and typically see lower surge amounts.) A surge of 15 to 20 feet or higher could sweep over barrier islands on the Outer Banks and reshape the coastline.
But inland rainfall is likely to be equally damaging. Right now, meteorologists see the storm hitting the coast, then stalling over land, possibly for as long as four or five days, and dumping huge amounts of rainfall, up to 30 or 40 inches, affecting a much wider area than the center of the hurricane itself.
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