officials here are telling us that people have to be wary of, even as this storms moves away from charleston, the danger is trying to come back here home too quickly and encountering situations like this. that s right. a lot of the fatalities occur after the storms have already passed. brian todd in charleston, thanks so much. let s go now to cnn meteorologist tom sater for the latest forecast. tom, tell us where hurricane dorian is now and where he is headed. well, at the last couple of days, jake, dorian stayed approximately 100 miles off the coast of florida, parallel, the entire coastline. now it s closest approach, it s now 60 miles just south of myrtle beach. it s about 110 from wilmington. but it s those strong eye wall winds that are within 20 miles now. so we re still seeing a surge threat. the good news for charleston, they were looking at near-record levels of water just behind hugo of 1999, didn t quite get to 10.3, because at high tide at 2:00 p.m., those strong winds
whipped around and winds will get strong today specifically across nantucket and into the long island sound region. 40 to 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts. we have high wind washings from t warnings and advisories. the strong heest part esest warnings and advisories. the strong heest part ese part will occur midday today. look as these wind gusts about that it will quickly die down sunday, but it will create a lot of rainfall. radar is lighting up like a christmas tree. i-95 will be very tricky along the east coast. good thing it is not a workday. this area will see some treacherous driving conditions. but again, it will keep it all rain, so we won t see the snow piling up in the typical nor easter fashion that we would see. nonetheless, take the storm seriously because the wind, the storm the coastal surge threat or i should say the flood
sustained, it is like an airplane taking off as it moves ashore and quickly moves out of here. that s the only piece of good news. unlike florence, that lingered along the carolinas for a couple of days and caused significant damage there, when it comes to rainfall damage. this storm will move out quickly. because of the shear magnitude getting up to category 4 strength, the surge threat higher. and because of the concave nature, as derek was eluding to, a baseball mitt set up with the topography in the landscape, allows the water to funnel in. when you are at 13 plus feet, you are inundating the coastal communities and taking the water beyond the first story of the homes up through a second story of the homes, potentially several blocks inland, this is where minute story evacuations are in place across these regions of florida. you will see the storm system, once it moves out of here, we are expecting significant and
duration is going to impact the counties and the states, the abilities to potentially respond to this, because we re not going to be sending people out in unsafe conditions, so it might take some time before we can begin recovery operations. i m looking at live pictures, steven, right now from buxton, north carolina. some of the outer banks, again, north of where both you and i are right now. looks like some of that rain is already beginning to hit. you can see the seas tossing and turning a little bit. it s low tide right now, or lower tide right now. the problem, as you noted with this storm, is that the surge threat is over a full day, maybe even full days. that s several, several high tide cycles. you ve been here in the region for some 20 years. have you ever seen a storm that had this array of threats. it s been quite some time. i think the last time we were challenged by something of this magnitude with respect to storm surge probably was fran in 1996.
line are absolutely going to heed those evacuation orders and get out. some of the more interior people, you know, they were getting all the supplies, the generators, the fuel. but again, like you said, if this storm sits here for 24 hours, even longer, you ve got the freshwater flooding threat that you could get trapped along with that wind damage threat, the surge threat, all that water from the atlantic is going to go up the rivers and into the inlets. where is it going to go? it s going to spill out on the land. and water that you can t use. so if you re stuck, you don t have potable water. you re just sitting and waiting and putting a ton of stress on the first responders. and we know how that story goes. brett, be safe. i ll be checking in with you. i m going to be down there later tonight. i m sure we ll meet up at some point, okay? thank you, brother, appreciate it. you know, the story there is a story in a lot of the science. so you and i are covering a we covered like