CNN News: 弗洛伦斯飓风

Thank you for downloading, streaming or just plain watching CNN 10. I’m Carl Azuz explaining world news from the CNN Center. First today, get away from the coast. That’s what a Americans in the U.S. Southeast are being told as a monster storm brews in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s name is Hurricane Florence. It’s already triggered mandatory evacuation orders for more than 1 million people in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. And Florence is uniquely dangerous. For one thing it’s powerful. Its wind speeds hovered around 140 miles per hour Tuesday.

That makes Florence a Category 4 hurricane. That makes Florence strong enough to blow the roofs off houses, knock down walls, snap most trees, take out power. The area it hits could be uninhabitable for months. For another it’s storm surge could be catastrophic. This is the abnormal rise in sea levels as a hurricane blows water ashore. A CNN meteorologist says Hurricane Florence could bring a 20 foot storm surge. That would make the tide 20 feet higher than it normally is as Florence blows in.

The National Hurricane Center says anything more than a 12 foot storm surge is life threatening. Third, scientists tracking this storm predict it will slow down after it makes landfall. That’s a major problem as far as flooding is concerned. Last years Hurricane Harvey was a slow moving storm. It poured rain on Houston, Texas for more than a week and that caused scenes like this. Predicting exactly what storms like Florence will do is still like predicting the weather. There’s uncertainty about it. This hurricane’s wind speeds fluctuated Tuesday. Forecasters didn’t agree on whether it would still be a Category 4 storm at landfall, if it would get stronger or weaker before it blows ashore. But here’s how things looked yesterday afternoon.