[For the latest updates on Friday, read our Hurricane Dorian live briefing here.]

Dorian lashes the Carolinas, causing power losses and flooding.

Hurricane Dorian was pounding much of the Carolina coast with heavy rain and strong winds on Thursday, spawning small tornadoes and causing widespread power losses and flooding.

By Thursday evening, the Category 2 storm was centered about 30 miles from Cape Fear, N.C., and its eyewall, where the winds are strongest, was very near the cape, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm was slowly weakening as it moved northeastward up the East Coast at about 10 miles an hour, but it remained a destructive Category 2 hurricane. The center’s models indicated that the eye of the storm, about 45 miles in diameter, could touch land on the Outer Banks of North Carolina Thursday night or Friday.

The eye does not have to make landfall for the storm to cause serious damage. Hurricane-strength winds, extending as far as 60 miles from the storm center, pummeled parts of the Carolina coast during the day on Thursday. F orecasters said storm surge waters could flood up to eight feet above normal tide levels in some areas.