Hurricane Dorian regained strength over the Atlantic on Wednesday and had become a Category 3 storm by Wednesday night, with maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour and expected flash floods and storm surge. By Thursday morning, Dorian was about 80 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina, churning north at 8 mph. There was already flooding in Charleston, and the National Weather Service forecast a combined high tide/storm surge of up to 10.3 feet around Charleston Harbor, just shy of a 12.5-foot record set in 1989.
Power companies report that more than 128,000 customers are without power on the coast of South Carolina, and Duke Energy said Wednesday it expects 700,000 outages in the Carolinas because of Hurricane Dorian.
Dorian devastated the Bahamas over the weekend, making landfall as a Category 5 storm and stalling over the country's northern islands for nearly two days. The confirmed death toll in the Bahamas is 20, and one death has been attributed to Dorian in Puerto Rico, Florida, and North Carolina.