Patricia Mazzei and Adeel Hassan

“It all depends on this dance of the pressure systems around the storm,” said Hugh Willoughby, a meteorologist at Florida International University in Miami.

If its strength holds, Dorian would be the first hurricane of Category 4 or higher to make landfall on Florida’s east coast since 1992, when Andrew ripped through the Miami area as a Category 5 storm, causing widespread damage.

On Friday evening, Dorian was gaining strength over the Atlantic Ocean, becoming a Category 4 storm with winds of 130 mph.

The slow speed of the storm when it nears Florida has potentially dire consequences for the state. “A slowing storm is not our friend,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He warned of the increased risk of sitting over the state for days and prolonging the strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rainfall.

Also Friday, President Donald Trump approved an emergency declaration for Florida, allowing for increased federal support and resources to flow to the state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said that 2,500 National Guard troops had been activated, a force that could grow to 4,000 by Saturday night. He added that the state had ordered 1 million gallons of water and sent 860,000 bottles of water to counties for distribution.

Some gas stations have been running out of fuel, DeSantis said at a news conference Friday morning. The state has waived regulations and set up police escorts to get more gas to stations, including from nearby states, the governor said.

State authorities were also visiting and calling about 120 nursing homes that have not reported whether they have working generators.

Many Florida cities are girding for a direct hit.

A strike by Dorian in a densely populated region could be especially dangerous, said W. Craig Fugate, a former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He rattled off a list of Florida cities — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville — where, he said, storm surge could be deadly “once you start measuring in feet, not inches.”

“That’s not saying it won’t be devastating wherever it hits the shore,” said Fugate, who is also a former director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. “But the reality is: What drives the response is people.”

Orlando is inland in Central Florida, but if the storm dumps rain for many hours, the city’s lakes could overflow. In North Florida, the St. Johns and Matanzas Rivers have flooded Jacksonville and St. Augustine even when storms have not directly hit the cities, Fugate noted.

Expensive installations along the flourishing Space Coast, around Cape Canaveral, could be affected. Fuel shipments could be delayed by any disruptions at major hubs for cargo such as Jaxport in Jacksonville or Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale.

Powerful waves in Lake Okeechobee, Florida’s largest inland lake, could test its aging dike. Pounding rains might force the release of polluted waters into fragile estuaries to the east and west, which could lead to toxic algae blooms.

“What we’ve always encouraged in Florida is catastrophic disaster planning,” Fugate said.

The search for gas is already getting challenging.

Lines at some gas stations, especially on the east coast, were reminiscent of when Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, when most gas stations in South Florida exhausted their supply. At one Shell station with 16 pumps in the Coconut Grove section of Miami, a long line of cars twisted around the block, waiting to fill up. But as drivers reached a pump, they discovered there was no gas. They just drove away. No one bothered to tell the others in line, and the useless waiting carried on through much of the morning.

One driver, Jaime Gonzalez, 65, parked his gray pickup truck in front of a pump at the Shell station at 6:30 a.m. to begin a nearly eight-hour wait. A tanker truck finally arrived with 6,300 gallons of regular gas and 2,700 gallons of premium, and Gonzalez began filling his tank about 2 p.m.

The state’s price gouging law was also in effect. It bans excessive raises in the price of essential goods for the duration of a state emergency declaration.

By Friday afternoon, the attorney general’s office had received more than 700 complaints alleging price gouging. The majority were about gas and bottled water, said Kylie Mason, the press secretary for Attorney General Ashley Moody.

King tides could make coastal flooding worse.

Forecasters have warned of the risk of “life-threatening” storm surge. Making matters worse, Dorian is arriving at a time of king tides for the East Coast.

A king tide happens when gravitational forces of the moon, the sun and the Earth are lined up, pulling the ocean back and forth with greater force than is usual.

Well ahead of Dorian’s arrival, tides reached 8 feet — around 2 feet above normal — in Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday, flooding roads and causing major headaches. Tides there are expected to climb even higher Friday evening, perhaps reaching 8.2 feet and submerging many low-lying roads.

Shannon Scaff, Charleston’s emergency management director, said he was most concerned about what would happen when Dorian arrived there in five to seven days. Heavy rainfall — possibly more than 1 foot — could coincide with still elevated high tides.

Over the past few years, he said, hurricanes like Matthew and Irma have wrought new and unpredictable flooding patterns.

“Sometimes the forecasts are just off,” he said. “We can’t stop the storm. We can’t stop the tides, but we’re going to make ourselves as ready as we can.”

President Donald Trump says the forecast is ‘not looking good.’

President Donald Trump said Friday that the forecast for Hurricane Dorian was “not looking good” and predicted that the storm could be very devastating to Florida. Speaking to reporters before heading to Camp David for the weekend, Trump said “tremendous work” was going on in Florida to mitigate the potential damage from wind and rain.

There will be FEMA officials accompanying him at Camp David, the president said, and Sunday afternoon he will attend a briefing at FEMA headquarters in Washington. He had previously canceled a weekend trip to Poland.

Trump will be joined by Rear Adm. Peter Brown, his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser; Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff; and Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary and communications director.

“So far it’s looking not good, I have to be honest with you,” Trump said of Hurricane Dorian.

Trump acknowledged that Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, looks like it will be “dead center” in the hurricane’s path, but that “the thing I’m worried about is the state of Florida.”

“We’re hoping for one element,” Trump said, “and that is that it makes a right turn.”

At Cape Canaveral, NASA is moving a launch tower.

The mobile launch platform, which will be used to hold the Space Launch System rocket currently under development, had been at the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center for tests. It can withstand strong winds, but “it’s best to bring it back to a safe and secure location,” said Gregory Harland, a NASA spokesman.

On Friday, a crawler moving at 1 mph took the launcher from the launchpad to the 525-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building, which is like a gigantic garage for rockets.

The center is scheduled to shut down at 6 p.m. Saturday. Only a small “ride out” team was to remain there through the storm at the center’s launch control center. Once the storm passes, teams will inspect the center for damage before it reopens.

The space center has never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane but has suffered near misses. In August 2004, Hurricane Frances blew off 850 panels off the Vehicle Assembly Building, and, Hurricane Jeanne, just three weeks later, pulled off 25 more. Harland said corroded fasteners have been replaced, and the building is now much more resilient.

The United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, two companies that launch rockets from Kennedy and the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, are also making preparations.

“We are closely monitoring weather conditions and planning to take all necessary precautions to protect our employees and safeguard facilities in the potentially affected areas,” SpaceX said in a statement.

‘Do not be foolish,’ leader of the Bahamas warns.

A hurricane watch was in effect for the northwestern islands of the archipelago, and Prime Minister Hubert Minnis gave evacuation warnings to residents of the northernmost banks and low-lying areas on Grand Bahama Island and the Abaco Islands.

“This is a very powerful and extremely dangerous storm,” Minnis said. “Those who refuse to evacuate place themselves in great danger.”

Grand Bahama took a direct hit from Hurricane Matthew three years ago.

Government offices shut down at noon, the prime minister said. Grand Bahama International Airport was scheduled to shut down at 10 p.m. Friday, and Freeport Harbor would close at 2 p.m., the Ministry of Tourism and Aviation said.

Flights have been increased from Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands for residents who wish to leave, Minnis said.

“I urge you, do not be foolish and try to brave out this hurricane,” he said.

One of the strongest hurricanes to hit Florida came on Labor Day.

Hurricanes have a tragic history of interrupting Labor Day weekend in Florida, including a 1935 storm that killed hundreds of World War I veterans who were working in the Florida Keys. It remains one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the United States in modern history.

That storm, a Category 5, had been expected to miss the Keys. But an unexpected change in its route left a group of more than 600 veterans working on a highway construction project exposed to its wrath. An 11-car train sent to attempt a rescue was swept off the tracks by a tidal wave.

“Negligence played no part in the failure to evacuate the 684 World War veterans from camps in the Florida Keys,” a New York Times article published days after the storm said, citing an official report to the president that attributed the losses to “an act of God.”

The 1935 storm, known simply as the Labor Day Hurricane, pushed up Florida’s west coast after battering the Keys, leading to high tides in St. Petersburg and Tampa and ripping roofs off buildings in Sarasota.

In all, 408 deaths were blamed on the Labor Day Hurricane, most of them in the Keys. A crowd of 20,000 mourners later gathered to pay their respects. The Times reported that the bodies of the veterans were burned at the scene “for the protection of those who survived.”

Three hurricane hunters took a flight into history.

Teams of researchers are routinely sent on flights into the centers of storms to gather crucial data. These so-called hurricane hunters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based in Lakeland, Florida, and their partners went to get a snapshot of the storm’s insides.

On Thursday, the agency announced that it had completed a reconnaissance mission with its first all female three-pilot flight crew, featuring Capt. Kristie Twining, Cmdr. Rebecca Waddington and Lt. Lindsey Norman.

This article originally appeared in

Hurricane Dorian Intensifies to Category 4 Strength

Forecasters expect Hurricane Dorian to arrive somewhere along the east coast of Florida on Tuesday afternoon. But exactly where is still a mystery, with some prediction models suggesting a direct blow to Central Florida and others projecting the storm to veer north or south.

Forecasters expect Hurricane Dorian to arrive somewhere along the east coast of Florida early Tuesday morning. But exactly where is still a mystery, with some prediction models suggesting a direct blow to Central Florida and others projecting the storm to veer north or south.

If the forecast for its strength holds, Dorian would be the first hurricane of Category 4 or higher to make landfall on Florida’s east coast since 1992, when Andrew ripped through the Miami area as a Category 5 storm, causing widespread damage.

On Friday afternoon, Dorian was gaining strength over the Atlantic Ocean, becoming a Category 3 storm with winds of 115 mph.

“The biggest concern will be Dorian’s slow motion when it is near Florida, placing some areas of the state at an increasing risk of a prolonged, drawn-out event of strong winds, dangerous storm surge, and heavy rainfall,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The search for gas is already getting challenging in places.

Lines at some gas stations, especially on the state’s east coast, were reminiscent of when Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, when most gas stations in South Florida exhausted their supply.

In West Palm Beach, drivers were reporting a growing number of stations with limited or no fuel supply, according to Gas Buddy, a tracking app.

DeSantis said the state would begin highway patrol escorts for fuel trucks. “Some parts of the state you have cars lined up, it makes it more difficult for the trucks to get in and replenish the supply, so we think those escorts will help with that,” he said.

By Friday afternoon, the attorney general’s office had received more than 700 complaints alleging price gouging. The majority of them were regarding gas and bottled water, said Kylie Mason, the press secretary for Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Forecasters have warned of the risk of “life-threatening” storm surge. Making maters worse, Dorian is arriving at a time of king tides for the East Coast.

Shannon Scaff, Charleston’s emergency management director, said he was most concerned about what happens when Dorian arrives in 5 to 7 days there. Heavy rainfall — possibly more than 1 foot — could coincide with still elevated high tides.

At Cape Canaveral, NASA is moving a 380-foot-high launch tower indoors for safekeeping.

The space center has never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane but has suffered near misses. In August 2004, Hurricane Frances blew off 850 panels off the Vehicle Assembly Building, and three weeks later, Hurricane Jeanne pulled off 25 more. Harland said corroded fasteners have been replaced, and the building is now much more resilient.

The United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, two companies which launch rockets from Kennedy and the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, are also making preparations.

Parts of the Bahamas could be in the storm’s path, too.

A hurricane watch was also in effect for the northwestern Bahamas. As of 2 p.m. Friday, Dorian was centered about 445 miles east of the northwestern Bahamas and was moving northwest at about 10 mph.

Dorian was expected to arrive in the northwest Bahamas, a popular tourist spot, on Saturday and move over the area Sunday. Residents were racing to finish their preparations Friday. They cleaned out grocery store shelves, and worked to secure their homes and businesses.

Wayne Neely, a local meteorologist, told the Nassau Guardian that the storm’s current track meant that it could miss the islands, “but any wobble, left or right, could take it either further north or further south and then there would be catastrophe.”

Flights were still landing at Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport on Friday morning. The Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line canceled its Sunday and Tuesday departures on its Grand Celebration, but its cruise Friday was still scheduled to depart as planned.

Authorities in the Bahamas were asking tourists with vacations planned for the Labor Day weekend to check with airlines, hotels and cruise lines before leaving their homes.

Here’s what hurricane categories actually mean.

Powerful winds are what define a hurricane, so they are named and classified based on how hard their winds are blowing. To qualify as a hurricane, a storm must have sustained winds of 74 mph or more.

All hurricanes are dangerous, but some pack more punch than others. So meteorologists try to quantify each storm’s destructive power by using the Saffir-Simpson scale, placing it in one of five categories based on sustained wind speed.

The National Hurricane Center said on Thursday that Dorian was expected to hit Florida as a “major” hurricane — in Category 3 or possibly Category 4.

Category 3 hurricanes, with wind speeds of 111 to 129 mph, can take roofs off well-constructed houses and knock out electric and water systems for days or weeks. Category 4 hurricanes do catastrophic damage, felling most trees and power poles and wrecking some buildings with their wind speeds of 130 to 156 mph.

But some experts say the scale is a limited way to assess a storm’s destructive potential because it focuses only on the power of its winds, and not on the surge of seawater that a storm flings ashore, or on the flooding caused by its torrential rains. Most hurricane fatalities and property damage tend to be caused by those factors.

Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 storm when it slammed into the Louisiana coast on Aug. 29, 2005. But it was the storm surge that overwhelmed New Orleans’s flood walls and levees and devastated the city.

One of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit Florida came on Labor Day.

Teams of researchers are routinely sent on flights into the centers of storms to gather crucial data. These so-called hurricane hunters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based in Lakeland, Florida, and their partners get a snapshot of a storm’s insides.

Hurricane Dorian Updates: Storm Intensifies to Category 3 Strength

It’s uncertain where the storm will make landfall.

As forecasters shifted the projected path of Dorian northward and posted tropical storm warnings for all of Puerto Rico, the island’s leaders sought to assure its 3.2 million people that they would not be caught underestimating Dorian, especially after the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

“I am confident that the people of Puerto Rico are prepared,” Gov. Wanda Vázquez said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We are going to move forward.”

Dorian is expected to strengthen over the warm waters of the Caribbean and to reach Puerto Rico on Wednesday, with its winds and rains also sweeping over the Virgin Islands and the eastern provinces of the Dominican Republic, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center. Even if its strongest sustained winds do not reach hurricane force, Puerto Rico could be soaked with 6 inches of rain or more and could experience damaging flooding, especially in the island’s central mountains.

On Tuesday, the storm system was dumping heavy rain on the Windward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, with maximum sustained winds of about 50 mph. The islands include Martinique, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Overnight in Barbados, the storm knocked out power in many towns in the island’s north. But officials said public transportation would be back to normal service and businesses would reopen by the end of the day.

The storm was moving west-northwest at about 13 mph, on a path that could eventually bring high winds and rainfall to the Bahamas. And while Dorian’s trajectory is difficult to predict days in advance, forecasters say tropical storm conditions are possible in Florida, beginning Saturday.

President Donald Trump repeated Tuesday, incorrectly, that Congress had approved more than $90 billion for Puerto Rico last year.

Vázquez said that, regardless of Trump’s comment, his administration had been “extraordinary” in staying in touch and offering assistance as Dorian approached. She said her administration had asked FEMA for a federal emergency declaration, but the request had not yet been approved.

Puerto Rico Braces for Possibility of Direct Hit as Storm Closes In

As Tropical Storm Dorian drew closer Tuesday, Puerto Rico braced for the possibility that it would not just sideswipe the island but perhaps make landfall there. The authorities, acting under a state of emergency, closed schools early and prepared emergency shelter for tens of thousands of people.

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Patricia Mazzei and Adeel Hassan

Articles written by the author

Hurricane Dorian Intensifies to Category 4 Strength

Hurricane Dorian Updates: Storm Intensifies to Category 3 Strength

Puerto Rico Braces for Possibility of Direct Hit as Storm Closes In