HURRICANE FLOYD

September 14, 1999
		At 600 miles across, Hurricane Floyd is one of the largest ever recorded in the Atlantic. Max Mayfield, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, describes the hurricane as it hovers around Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Online NewsHour Special Report: Killer Tornadoes in the Midwest Dec. 28, 1998: A look at the year's devastating weather. Nov. 30, 1998: Honduras begins rebuilding after Hurricane Mitch Nov. 2, 1998: Hurricane Mitch ravages Central America Sept. 28, 1998: Hurricane Georges downgraded to a tropical storm Sept. 25, 1998: Hurricane Georges threatens lives from Florida to Louisiana Sept. 24, 1998: Tracking hurricane Georges: Aug. 12, 1998: Flooding on the Yangtze takes over 2000 lives in China Aug. 7, 1998: Texas tops 100 degrees for twenty-ninth day. July 20, 1998: Tidal wave hits Papua New Guinea July 17, 1998: A Texas heat wave Jan. 12, 1998: A severe ice storm strikes Northeastern U.S. and Canada Browse the NewsHour's complete coverage of weather.   Storm Prediction Center National Weather Service FEMA	MARGARET WARNER: Our correspondent Tom Bearden is in Daytona Beach, Florida. He begins our hurricane coverage. OFFICER: He was over on the beach side, and he's all by himself. SPOKESPERSON: Okay, well, we'll get him registered. OFFICER: Okay, excellent. You'll be safe here, all right? TOM BEARDEN: Emergency shelters in the Daytona Beach area filled up rapidly as the day progressed. They were opened only to people who didn't have the means to leave the area. Some shelters were already over capacity, like the one at Horizon Elementary School. WORKER: Special needs, we still have a few open. Atlantic High School is full. That's full. And Palm Terrace is full. TOM BEARDEN: Workers at the Volushia County Emergency Operations Center were taking a steady stream of calls from people looking for advice on what to do. But for the most part, all they could tell people was they were pretty much on their own. WORKER: A lot of these are just kind of patting people on the head and telling them they're going to be okay. Good afternoon. Emergency services.
	Preparing to evacuate
	TOM BEARDEN: Kurt Freudenburg and his family were covering up the last of the windows at their house on Daytona Beach this morning. Freudenburg moved here from Houston not very long ago. KURT FREUDENBURG: I came out here on business a year and a half ago, and we just really loved the area. I mean it's been so great. Daytona, normally, is very safe from hurricanes. Most of them either hit South of us or North of us, because we sit kind of back in enough that they really haven't been evacuated at all before. TOM BEARDEN: Are you worried? KURT FREUDENBURG: A little bit, especially when we've heard that the surf wave was going to be about 35 feet coming in, and the sea wall over on the beach a block and a half away is only 12-foot high. Yeah, a little. TOM BEARDEN: Freudenburg lives at the end of a peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Intracoastal Waterway. OFFICER: Do you have any I.D., sir? MAN: Yes, I do. TOM BEARDEN: Access is limited to a few bridges, and state and local police were only allowing residents across this morning. Richard Robinson was helping Freudenburg's neighbor, Margaret Lawrence, board up her house as she and her husband prepared to evacuate. MARGARET LAWRENCE: I'm not going to worry about things I can't do anything about. I'm concerned, but I've done everything I can. Fortunately, we got rid of our little sports car that my husband couldn't get in and out of anymore, and got that. TOM BEARDEN: A lot of people are scared in Daytona, and indeed along the entire U.S. Coast from Florida to South Carolina, as one of the largest storms in history approaches. The outer edge of the hurricane was already kicking up the surf this morning, even though the storm was still hundreds of miles away. The high-rise condominiums and rental properties are deserted, most people apparently choosing to obey the governor's order to evacuate an estimated one million people from the eastern Florida coast. Georgia and South Carolina have also urged an additional one million people to evacuate.
	Expecting extreme damage
	MARGARET WARNER: Elizabeth Farnsworth takes the story from there. She spoke a short time ago with Max Mayfield, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thanks for being with us, Mr. Mayfield. MAX MAYFIELD: You're very welcome. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Where is Hurricane Floyd right now? MAX MAYFIELD: Well, you can see the eye is just now passing off the North coast of the Abaco Islands here, the northwestern Bahamas. This is still a very, very powerful hurricane. The center is about 235 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. But as you can see, it's a very large hurricane, and the tropical storm force winds actually spin out about 200 miles away from the center. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how fierce are those winds right now? MAX MAYFIELD: Well, they've actually come down a little bit to 140 miles per hour. They were up to 155 miles per hour this time yesterday. They don't want to make anything of that really because it's a little bit like being run over by a freight train, versus being run over by a semi. Neither prospect is good here. This is still a very powerful Category 4 hurricane on the southwest end of the hurricane's tail, and wherever that core moves over, if that core were to make a direct hit on the United States coastline, we'll expect extreme damage. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Give us a sense of what kind of damage a Category 4 hurricane does. MAX MAYFIELD: Well, Hurricane Andrew is a good example; that hit the Southeasterly coast in 1992, and then Hurricane Hugo upon the South Carolina coast in 1989 is another example. In fact, Hugo might be a little more representative because it was powerful and large. And this hurricane is, indeed, quite large. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Trace the trajectory of the hurricane for us on your map there. MAX MAYFIELD: Okay. We really think that it will continue on this northwestern motion and eventually turn a little bit more towards the north. This time tomorrow night we forecast the center of the hurricane to be somewhere off the northeast Florida coast, and then sometime around midnight tomorrow night be on the South Carolina coast. Now, we make a forecast every six hours. We're always looking at additional information; that will likely be revised as we go along here. But the main point here is that we do have a hurricane warning out right now from Boca Raton, Florida, all the way through the Florida coast - the Georgia coast -- and now it's extended to include the South Carolina coast, up to Little River in South Carolina. As it starts turning more towards the north and eventually east to north, we expect it to accelerate and we also have a hurricane watch in effect in from Little River in South Carolina all the way up to Cape Charles on the southern tip of the Delmar Peninsula.
	Not just a coastal event
	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Mayfield, could it still veer off and avoid the coast? MAX MAYFIELD: The computer models are really not suggesting that. It may turn a little bit more east or due north. That timing is certainly not very clear now. This is a very real threat to Georgia and the Carolinas. We really don't have much evidence here that it's going to miss the whole coastline. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Give us a sense of the storm surges and the rainfall that could result from this. MAX MAYFIELD: Okay. That's very good. We need to talk about the hazards. One hazard, there is a storm surge, and on this track, we're saying we could have five to ten feet storm surges on the Florida east coast. Five feet will be plenty high enough as long as the core stays off the coast like we're forecasting. If the core of the hurricane gets closer, it will become higher. And then as it gets up closer to Georgia and the Carolinas, the storm surges will begin to increase higher because the Continental Shelf is so shallow in those areas. So that's the storm surge, and then one hazard. And the greatest potential for loss of life is always from the storm surge on the immediate coastline. We also need to talk about the wind, 140-mile-an-hour winds and the core of the hurricane. As it starts moving faster into the Carolinas, we would expect some of those strong winds to spread well inland. A hurricane is not just a coastal event. But the strong winds and heavy rains will spread well inland as well. We're forecasting five to ten inches of rain. We've really learned some lessons here over the last 10 and 20 years. We know that we have a significant loss of life from hurricanes inland from the inland flooding. And people didn't know that. The last hazard are the tornadoes, usually the tornadoes are on the right front quadrant; that's really not going to be a problem for Florida, but as it moves up closer to the Carolinas, we would certainly expect to see some isolated tornadoes. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Mayfield, what made this storm get so huge. This is rare, isn't it? MAX MAYFIELD: It is. In fact, yesterday at this time it was almost a Category 5 hurricane. We've only had two Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the United States this century. Luckily this one has gone down a little bit. But it's still a very solid Category 4 hurricane. We've had maybe 15 or so Category 4 hurricanes strike the United States this century. So even that is very rare as far as why it strengthened that much, we never really are sure. But it did move over a very warm eddy of warm water in this region. We think that helped it some. The upper level environment is very, very favorable. And for whatever reason, it is a very powerful Category 4 hurricane. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Max Mayfield, thank you very much. MAX MAYFIELD: You're welcome.