Plan B Forum

Dorian struck the northern Bahamas on Sunday as a Category 5 hurricane, and continued to menace the southeastern coast of the United States from Florida to the Carolinas.



Hurricane warnings and storm surge warnings and watches are posted for nearly all of Florida’s Atlantic coast. Georgia and South Carolina announced mandatory evacuations in coastal areas.

As Hurricane Dorian struck the northwestern Bahamas on Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said that the maximum sustained winds around the eye of the “extremely dangerous” storm had reached 185 miles an hour, making it a “catastrophic” storm with “devastating winds.”

Early Monday, after the eye of the storm had reached Grand Bahama Island, the winds had slowed slightly to 175 miles an hour. The center said further gradual weakening was forecast but fluctuations in intensity up or down could occur.

Early images and video emerging from the Abaco Islands showed scenes of devastation as the powerful, slow-moving storm churned its way through the islands. Forecasters said Dorian would continue to lash the islands for much of the day on Monday. Storm surges of as much as 18 to 23 feet were possible, enough to swamp many low-lying areas, and as much as 30 inches of rain could fall in some locations before the storm passes.

The hurricane center warned that no one should venture outdoors into the eye of the storm.

“The hurricane will move dangerously close to the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday night,” the hurricane center said.[The course of this storm has been extremely unpredictable; a slight jog west could bring a devastating landfall to Florida. On the current path with winds so high it will still cause significant damage over a large section of of coastal Florida; a slight jog east will cause the storm to largely miss Florida and make landfall somewhere further north, hopefully as a weaker storm in a less populated area.]

Hurricane and storm surge watches on the coast were extended Sunday night to reach all the way north to the Florida-Georgia border. A hurricane warning was posted for the Florida coast from near Jupiter to near Titusville, indicating the area that forecasters see as most likely to experience hurricane-force winds on Monday; a storm surge warning was posted from Lantana, near Boca Raton, to near Titusville. Storm surge along the Florida coast could reach 4 to 7 feet in places, forecasters said.

The hurricane center said on Sunday that there were wind gusts exceeding 220 miles an hour — three times the wind speed to qualify as a hurricane. Officials said the storm was the strongest on record in the Bahamas and one of the most intense in the Atlantic in the last century. Hurricane-force winds extend 45 miles outward from the center of the storm, the center said, with tropical storm-force winds as much as 140 miles outward.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina each announced mandatory evacuations for certain coastal areas of their states, to take effect at noon on Monday.

Crackpot wrote:All that will do is ensure that mar-a-largo gets speedy and adequate federal assistance.

Gob wrote:Why do some people believe God will divert the course of a hurricane, if enough people ask him nicely, or grovel to him? He's not done it before, why start now?

Gob wrote:Why do some people believe God will divert the course of a hurricane, if enough people ask him nicely, or grovel to him? He's not done it before, why start now?

BoSoxGal wrote:What is fundamentally despicable about that sort of belief is that it quite logically demands also that the people who got shot and died are people God wasn’t walking beside - that anyone who dies or suffers clearly deserves it since God is capable of saving and sometimes chooses not to.