A dangerous
storm is expected to land shortly in the US East Coast, where it has already
brought flooding and destructive gales.
Hurricane
Florence, packing winds of up to 90mph (150 km/h), is first due to hit North
Carolina.
It lost
power on its approach, but officials warn it could still kill "a lot of
people" amid risks of "catastrophic" flooding.
Evacuation
warnings are in place for more than a million people.
The governor
of North Carolina said surviving the storm would be a test of "endurance,
teamwork, common sense, and patience".
"The
first bands of the storm are upon us but we have days more to go," Roy
Cooper said.
National
Weather Service forecaster Brandon Locklear said North Carolina is likely to
see eight months' worth of rain in two to three days.
Thousands of
miles away meanwhile a huge typhoon is moving towards the Philippines. More
than five million people are in the path of Super Typhoon Mangkhut, officials
say.
What are the
dangers?
Conditions
deteriorated throughout Thursday. Some areas of North Carolina saw almost a
foot of rain just a few hours, and footage showed sea levels begin to surge in
land.
At 23:00
local time (03:00 GMT) the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said wind speeds had
slightly lowered, making it a category one hurricane.
The NHC says
that despite the gradual lowering in wind strength, the storm remains extremely
dangerous because of the high volume of rainfall and storm surges predicted.
"Inland
flooding kills a lot of people, unfortunately, and that's what we're about to
see," said Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(Fema).
He said that
people living near rivers, streams and lowland areas in the region were most at
risk.
How are
people coping?
More than a
million people have been ordered to leave the coasts of the Carolinas and
Virginia, with more than 12,000 taking refuge in emergency shelters.
Asked what
she was most worried about, Monica Scott, a young mother who had brought her
children to a shelter in North Carolina, said: "Not having a place to go
home to, or a job."
Not everyone
though has obeyed the warnings.
Queues were
reported outside a branch of Waffle House in the port city of Wilmington, North
Carolina. The restaurant is used as a measure of how bad storms are.
A man in
North Carolina said he would stay with his dog, since shelters were not taking
pets. "I'm not leaving him here," Antonio Ramirez told the AFP news
agency,
More than
150,000 people already without power, but energy companies warn up to three
million homes and businesses could also lose power.
Officials
have warned restoring electricity could take days or even weeks. Petrol
stations in the area are also reporting shortages.
Parts of New
Bern, North Carolina, are 3m (10 feet) underwater and 150 people are waiting to
be rescued, authorities there said.
Over 1,400
flights have been cancelled, according to FlightAware.com, as most of the coastal
region's airports are closed to ride out the storm.
Emergency
workers are arriving from other parts of the US to aid in rescues.
How long
will this last?
Latest
predictions show the storm slowing to a near standstill as it pummels the coast
with "copious amounts of rain" from Thursday night to Saturday.
Wind speeds
are only expected to weaken on Saturday as the storm moves slowly across land.
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