Weather
forecasters warn of the risk of life-threatening flash flooding in parts of
North and South Carolina, and Virginia, from storm Florence.
It has been
downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm but continues to soak the East
Coast area with rain, downing trees and damaging homes.
It is slowly
grinding over the eastern states, with winds of 65mph (105km/h).
Five deaths
have been linked to the storm and thousands of people have been staying in
emergency shelters.
Evacuation
warnings were issued for 1.7 million people in the region.
All five
deaths linked to the storm are in North Carolina:
A mother and her infant were killed in
Wilmington when a tree fell on their home on Friday. Officials say the child's
father was also transported to hospital for injuries
Two men in their 70s were killed in Lenoir
County. One was killed when connecting an electrical generator, and family
members say another man was killed in a wind-related death when checking on
dogs outside his property
A woman died from cardiac arrest in the
town of Hampstead after emergency responders had their route to her blocked by
downed trees, a county official said
What is the
latest on the storm?
The storm
originally made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Friday
morning as a category one hurricane.
"Catastrophic
fresh water flooding" is expected in parts of both the Carolinas, the
National Hurricane Center said late on Friday local time.
Some parts
of North Carolina have already seen surges as high as 10ft in places.
North
Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said the hurricane was likely to "continue
its violent grind for days" and described the severity of the downfalls as
a "1,000 year event".
Florence is
expected to dump 18 trillion gallons of rainwater on US soil, meteorologist
Ryan Maue tweeted.
Almost
800,000 people are reported to be without power already in North Carolina, and
officials have warned restoring electricity could take days or even weeks.
How are
residents coping?
More than
20,000 residents have packed into North Carolina emergency shelters, and
officials have told those still in the storm's path to stay in place.
In
Jacksonville, North Carolina, officials had rescued more than 60 people
overnight on Thursday from a hotel that was collapsing in the storm.
Parts of New
Bern, North Carolina, which is home to 30,000 people, were 10ft underwater on
Friday after local rivers flooded their banks.
Scores of
residents in the riverfront city were plucked to safety, local reports say.
The Cajun
Navy, a volunteer rescue group, were among those travelling by boat around the
town to help people who were trapped.
Officials
have warned residents against entering attics, so as to avoid drowning, unless
they have a means to cut through to the roof.
The White
House said on Friday that President Donald Trump would travel to the region
next week unless his trip would disrupt clean-up and rescue efforts.
Is global
warming to blame?
The
relationship between climate change and hurricanes is a complex one.
Warmer seas
power hurricanes. So as the temperature of ocean water goes up, we might expect
the intensity of hurricanes to increase in future.
A hotter
atmosphere can also hold more water, so this should allow hurricanes to dump
more water on affected areas.
But there
are so many factors that contribute to these rare events, it has been difficult
to tease out clear trends from the data.
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