We’ve just passed the five year anniversary for a hurricane that you may not remember as being terribly impactful in the Carolinas, but it was significant in many ways. I’m Mike Davis, and I’m talking with Corey Davis, the Assistant State Climatologist from the State Climate Office of North Carolina, and that was Hurricane Dorian that we’re speaking of Corey, and it was significant in a different kind of way. What do you remember about Dorian?
“Well, Mike, just to take you back in time, this was early September of 2019. At that point, we were less than a year removed from Hurricane Florence. Obviously, that became one of those household names. Everybody remembers the 30 inches of rain, the widespread flooding that we had from Florence and Dorian was the first storm that came our way in the aftermath of Florence. Now, at that time, there were still places that were recovering from Florence, down on Camp Lejeune, they still had tarps on several 100 of their buildings from where they had had roofs fail and get damaged from that storm less than a year earlier. So as Dorian starts coming our way, not only does it have North Carolina in its crosshairs, but it was up to category five intensity over the Bahamas. So that had lots of people across the state saying, Oh no, here we go again. This is another strong storm that’s moving in our direction. Now, a couple things happened as Dorian got a little bit closer. For one, it weakened. It wasn’t a Category Five when it got here. Instead, it was a category two that’s still significant, that can do some damage, but certainly nowhere near like what they had down in the Bahamas at Category Five strength. But also, Dorian started to jog to the east, instead of moving further inland, like other storms, such as Florence had done. It basically stayed right along the coastline.”
In your opinion, are we ready for another Florence? Are we better prepared now than we were then maybe because of a Dorian?
“Well, it’s really hard to say we’ll ever be prepared for another storm like that, because no matter how well you prepare, there’s always going to be pretty widespread impacts. But looking at our transportation infrastructure, we’re definitely getting not only with the ability to forecast flooding for events like that, but also the work that the Department of Transportation is doing and elevating some of the roads, especially through Lumberton, which is where we had some of the biggest flooding impacts from Florence. And then if we look at some of the other areas in the state, especially right along the coastline, they’ve continued to see hit after hit from these storms, so they know what their vulnerabilities are, especially places like Cape Lookout, very low lying areas no more than about five feet above sea level. In some spots, they’ve seen what storm surge from these storms, like Dorian can do. That area was also hit very hard by Florence as well, but on the ocean side.”