that as well. as people try to rebuild their lives. reid, can you speak to the preparations that have been m e made? has everything been made? i think the city has been prepared. i lived here for over 25 years. i have been through many storms. the first was bonney and fran in the mid 90s. we talk about the thousands in carolina beach that may have not left. most people in new hanover county where i live, they took the warning. most people seemed to have left. tell us about the array of bb buoys out there. we are expecting to see
i m john berman in oak island, north carolina, where hurricane florence will arrive in the next several hours. you see in the satellite imagery the outer bands. the rest of the coastline will get the brunt of the storm. over the course of today, overnight, tomorrow, saturday. it is staying. it is staying for a long time. joining us now is reid hawkins. he is with the national weather service and hurricane center in wilmingt wilmington, north carolina. reid, give us a sense where the people will first feel the impact of the storm. the outer banks should see convection. we should see the bands move in and heavy rain across the area
inundated and many towns decimated. some of the towns may never come back. so now we have a large swath of southeastern north carolina and probably into south carolina that will see rainfall totals again that are just going to be debilitating to the area. all right. reid hawkins with the national weather service in wilmington, north carolina. stay safe. we will be near you to ride out this storm in a few hours. thanks so much. okay. thank you. you know, alisyn, we were talking about the preparedness here. we have seen lots of people getting ready to face the storm. they say they have the supplies, obviously they like more chainsaws and boats. what they really would like is people to go. go away so they don t have to be rescued. obviously it is life threatening for the emergency responders if they have to go out in the conditions to try to save people s lives. john, i m glad you are there.
and prevention opened its emergency operations center in atlanta overnight. joining us is reid hawkins. he is with the national weather service in wilmington, north carolina. we heard from meteorologist derek van dam in carolina beach. there are 1,000 people who are thinking about staying. many, of course, we heard saying they have ridden out hurricanes in the past. this is different. how dangerous is this? it is extremely dangerous. we have storm surge up to 13 feet potentially. it is a wide storm and with the length and duration, it will be battering for hours upon hours. we know strong winds are likely here. they are expecting tropical stor storm-force wind this afternoon. talk to us about the risk of downed trees and power lines? that is a risk we had with the many hurricanes we had here.
we will see it start to fail in pockets of the city go out and finally for the whole area. it is not uncommon. this is going to be such a long duration. it will be interesting to see. i know they are preparing for a couple of weeks without power in parts. right. we know t real danger, reid, is not necessarily the winds we start seeing today and into tomorrow morning, but the water. the 13 plus feet of storm surge that will then rage and sit and really cause the real damage in the wake of the storm. exactly. the storm surge is a concern, but the fleresh water flooding. we had a concern with floyd and matthew. the record rainfall rate for the area is like 25 or 26 inches. if we do get this 30 plus inches