ATLANTA — Norma Lemon, the owner of a Caribbean-themed restaurant on the South Carolina coast, knows well the power of a hurricane to shatter both property and lives. She can recall the distinctive sound of roofs being ripped away by the winds of Hurricane Hugo as it tore though Charleston in 1989. She spent nearly three months restoring her Island Breeze restaurant after it was flooded by Hurricane Irma in 2017.

[Here is the latest coverage on Hurricane Dorian]

On Sunday, she was also aware of the strange way that a brutal threat like Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm churning on an indeterminate path in the Atlantic some 500 miles southeast of her, can bind a disparate community across states and nations. She knew that all of them — the millions of people living in Dorian’s direct path, or within its vast cone of probable movement — were inhabiting a distinct universe of worry.

“We are in the same boat, pretty much,” said Ms. Lemon, 57. “They’re saying 175 mile-per-hour winds. You’re thinking about people in the Bahamas and other places that’s really getting it. And then you think that it’s coming to you.”

The National Hurricane Center said on Sunday that Dorian was still growing and moving west toward the Florida coast, with hurricane-force winds extending 45 miles from the center and tropical storm-force winds another 95 miles beyond that. The storm tore into the Bahamas Sunday, with wind gusts over 220 m.p.h — the strongest storm on record to hit the archipelago.