It’s been five years since a storm that happened in the Carolinas. You may not remember it as having a big effect, but it was important in many ways.
My name is Mike Davis and I’m talking with Corey Davis, who is the Assistant State Climatologist for the State Climate Office of North Carolina. That was Hurricane Dorian, which was important in a different way. What does Dorian remind you of?
“All right, Mike. Let me take you back in time. It was early September 2019.” It had only been a little over a year since Hurricane Florence. Undoubtedly, that became a well-known name. People still talk about the 30 inches of rain and widespread floods that Florence caused.
Dorian was the first storm that hit us after Florence. At that time, some places were still getting back on their feet after Florence. For example, on Camp Lejeune, blankets were still on more than 100 buildings whose roofs had collapsed and been damaged in the storm less than a year before.
As Dorian moves toward us, it has North Carolina in its sights and was as strong as a category five hurricane over the Bahamas. That made a lot of people across the state think, “Oh no, not again!” Another big storm is coming our way. There were a few things that happened as Dorian got closer.
In one way, it got weaker. When it got here, it wasn’t a Category Five. Instead, it was a category two storm, which is still pretty strong and can do some damage but wasn’t even close to the Category 5 storm that hit the Bahamas.
Also, Dorian began to move eastward instead of farther inland like other storms had, like Florence. It pretty much stayed right next to the coast.
Do you think we’re ready for another Florence? Are we more ready now than we were back then, maybe because of a Dorian?
“Well, I don’t think we’ll ever be ready for another storm like that. No matter how well you prepare, it will always have a big effect on a lot of people.”
But if we look at our transportation infrastructure, we’re definitely getting better at both being able to predict flooding for events like that and having the work done by the Department of Transportation to raise some roads, especially through Lumberton, where Florence caused the most damage.
Also, some parts of the state, especially those right along the coast, have been hit by these storms over and over again, so they know where their weak spots are.
This is especially true in places like Cape Lookout that are very low and only five feet above sea level. In some places, they’ve seen what Dorian can see: the storm surge from these storms. Florence also hit that area hard, but it was on the ocean side.