Hurricane Florence, Part 2

[Previously: Part 1.]

Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for more than a million people in the Carolinas and parts of Virginia as Hurricane Florence heads toward the U.S. east coast. If you are in the areas for which evacuations have been ordered, and are a non-incarcerated person who is allowed to evacuate, please heed the evacuation orders for your own safety.

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Abbie Bennett, Noah Feit, and Mark Price at the Charlotte Observer: Hurricane Florence, 'Storm of a Lifetime,' Shifts Toward South Carolina as 'Extreme' Threat.

The path of Hurricane Florence is still set squarely on the Carolinas, but early Wednesday morning, the storm's path shifted south and west, encompassing more of South Carolina and western North Carolina.

The "probable" forecast path for Florence, a Category 4 hurricane, as of 5 a.m. Wednesday showed the storm shifting further toward the southern North Carolina coast and the northern half of the South Carolina coast, with the forecast cone stretching into Georgia, western North Carolina and Tennessee, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Meanwhile, the projections for rain are growing, adding to growing concerns about flooding across the two states: Coastal North Carolina now expects 20 to 30 inches, with isolated areas of 40 inches projected in South Carolina.

"We cannot stress this enough: Florence poses a very serious threat to people who live far away from the coast," said a National Weather Service tweet late Tuesday. "Heavy and long-lasting rainfall could lead to catastrophic flooding in inland parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.”

"This will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast," the National Weather Service in Wilmington, North Carolina said Tuesday evening.

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The Editors of the Washington Post deserve credit, in my estimation, for being willing to publish this now, knowing the risk of accusations that they're "politicizing" the storm simply by pointing out that this isn't merely an act of nature: Another Hurricane Is About to Batter Our Coast. Trump Is Complicit. "Trump issued several warnings on his Twitter feed Monday, counseling those in Florence's projected path to prepare and listen to local officials. That was good advice. Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans' role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks. It is hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change. But there is no reasonable doubt that humans are priming the Earth's systems to produce disasters."

And they end with the reminder that it's not just Trump, and that he is not an outlier of his despicable party: "The president has cemented the GOP's legacy as one of reaction and reality denial. Sadly, few in his party appear to care."

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I fervently hope that the dire predictions about Hurricane Florence are undercut by an abrupt change in the storm's trajectory, and desperately fear that they won't be. And I hope for the safety of everyone in the storm's path.