Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington, North Carolina on Friday. The speed of Florence has slowed down dramatically, meaning life-threatening amounts of rainfall will continue to flood large parts of North Carolina and South Carolina.

Cumulative rainfall 0 8 16 24 32in+ Source: NOAA | Updated 2018-09-17T20:00:00.000Z

Parts of North and South Carolina are expected to get up to 40 inches of rain, with dangerous levels of flooding already causing large areas to lose power.

Florence is now due to track inland, before heading further up the US east coast.



Hurricane severity The grey cone shows the likely path of the centre of the hurricane. It does not indicate the size of the storm Source: US National Hurricane Center | Last updated: 21 September, 11:45am

The NHC track forecast cone, or “cone of uncertainty”, is the probable path of the centre of a tropical cyclone. The cone increases in size over time to indicate the greater areas of uncertainty about its path.

The majority of flooding from a storm surge is caused by a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect. The Earth’s rotation causes storms in the northern hemisphere to rotate anticlockwise, meaning a hurricane’s winds are deflected toward the right of the storm’s centre. Storms in the southern hemisphere behave the opposite way.



Path across the Atlantic

The 300 mile-wide storm was seen from space as it moved over the Atlantic Ocean. Florence has taken an unusual path from Africa to North Carolina over the course of 16 days.

Video source: GOES-16