CHARLESTON, S.C. — Hurricane Dorian raked the Carolina coast with howling, window-rattling winds and sideways rain Thursday, spinning off tornadoes and knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it pushed northward toward the dangerously exposed Outer Banks.
Leaving at least 20 people dead in its wake in the Bahamas, Dorian swept past Florida on Wednesday at a relatively safe distance, grazed Georgia overnight, and then began hugging the South Carolina-North Carolina coastline with more serious effects.
As of 2 p.m. MDT, it was a Category 2, blowing at 110 mph — a far cry from the Category 5 that mauled the Bahamas, but still dangerous. About 1 million people in the two states were warned to evacuate.
It was 55 miles south-southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and 105 miles south-southwest of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was moving at 8 mph.
“Get to safety and stay there,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said. “This won’t be a brush-by. Whether it comes ashore or not, the eye of the storm will be close enough to cause extensive damage in North Carolina.”
An estimated 3 million people in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas were warned to evacuate as the storm closed in. Navy ships were ordered to ride it out at sea, and military aircraft were moved inland.
At least two deaths were reported on the U.S. mainland, in Florida and North Carolina, both involving men who fell while getting ready for the storm.
The National Hurricane Center’s projected track showed Dorian passing near or over North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Friday, lashing the thin line of islands that stick out from the U.S. coast like a boxer’s chin.
Dorian was then expected to peel away from the shoreline.
In an assault that began over Labor Day weekend, Dorian pounded the Bahamas with Category 5 winds up to 185 mph, obliterating entire neighborhoods and triggering a humanitarian crisis.
About 830,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders on the South Carolina coast alone.
The National Hurricane Center forecast as much as 15 inches of rain for the coastal Carolinas, with flash-flooding likely.
In Charleston, a historic port city of handsome antebellum homes on a peninsula that is prone to flooding even from ordinary storms, the wind sent sheets of rain sideways, thunder boomed in the night sky, and power flickered on and off as the storm closed in.
More than two dozen blocks were closed by flooding in the city, where stores and restaurants downtown were boarded up with wood and corrugated metal.
The hurricane’s approach coincided with a rising tide in the afternoon that forecasters said could worsen flooding in the city.
Dorian also apparently spun off at least one tornado in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, damaging several homes, city spokesman Patrick Dowling said. No injuries were reported.
At midmorning in coastal Wilmington, North Carolina, just above the South Carolina line, Dorian’s outer bands lashed the city with heavy rain, whipping the trees.
Hundreds of shelter animals from coastal South Carolina arrived in Delaware ahead of the storm.
The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, said 200 were airlifted early Tuesday from shelters in danger of flooding. About 150 more were expected to arrive via land.
In Georgia, evacuation orders covering hundreds of thousands of people along the coast were lifted Thursday morning after the shoreline was largely spared by Dorian overnight.
Mayor Jason Buelterman of Tybee Island, Georgia, said the beach community of 3,000 people came through it without flooding, and the lone highway linking the island to Savannah on the mainland remained open throughout the night.
“If the worst that comes out of this is people blame others for calling evacuations, then that’s wonderful,” he said.
Tybee Islander Bruce Pevey went outside to take photos of unscathed homes to text to neighbors who evacuated. The storm, he said, turned out to be “a bunch of nothing.”
