Hurricane Dorian projected to get ‘dangerously close’ to Florida after devastating Bahamas

National Hurricane Center

Only now is Dorian starting to show signs of leveling off, but the hurricane remains an upper-level Category 5 hurricane with 185 miles per hours maximum sustained winds. Hazards facing the Bahamian islands for most of Sunday included wind gusts up to 220 mph and storm surge 18 to 23 feet above normal tide levels.

In an emotional press conference, Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said it was “probably the most sad and worst day of my life.” He added, “We’re facing a hurricane … one that we’ve never seen in the history of the Bahamas.”

The eye of the hurricane was roughly 155 miles west of West Palm Beach as the the NHC’s 8 p.m. advisory, but Hurricane and Tropical Storm Warnings and Watches are already in effect for a long strip of the eastern Florida coast.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended tolls on state highways on Sunday and urged residents to take evacuation orders seriously. “Hurricane #Dorian is one of the strongest storms that’s ever threatened Florida. If you live in a county with evacuation orders, please heed the call,” he said in a tweet.

President Trump approved an emergency declaration for the Sunshine State on Friday, freeing up resources and aid.

The National Hurricane Center’s forecast cone for Dorian, which has shifted back towards the west over the course of the day, covers a wide area that includes Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. All of these states have declared states of emergency and mandatory evacuations have been ordered from Florida to South Carolina.

What this cone shows is the probable track of the center of the storm (taking into consideration an array of computer models) over the next few days. Therefore, landfall is possible, but with much of the cone being over the Atlantic Ocean, Dorian’s eye may also remain off the coast.

Some models have shown landfall near Kennedy Space Center east of Orlando.

Other models predict the storm will stay offshore as it hooks north, scraping the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Storm surge, strong winds, flash flooding, and heavy rain all remain possible for these areas. By the end of the week Dorian could still be a hurricane in the vicinity of Virginia and Maryland.

The National Hurricane Center said along the Atlantic Coast from the Florida peninsula through Georgia up to 9 inches of rain is possible, up to 15 inches in the Coastal Carolinas, and up to 6 inches in Southeastern Virginia.

Last week, Dorian became the fourth named storm and the second hurricane of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season. It passed through the Virgin Islands and largely spared Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that is still recovering from the devastation of the 2017 hurricane season.

Dorian has already broken multiple records after it rapidly intensified over the course of two days. It tied the record set by the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in wind intensity when it made landfall over Bahamas on Sunday.

Trump described Dorian on Sunday as “one of the biggest hurricanes that we’ve ever seen.”