Dorian Speeds Up as Storm Starts Moving Away From U.S. Coast
Dorian Speeds Up as Storm Starts Moving Away From U.S. Coast
(Bloomberg) -- After a brief landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Hurricane Dorian is picking up speed and is expected to move further out to sea as it continues its march north, with its next target in eastern Canada.
The Category 1 storm is traveling northeast at 21 miles (34 kilometers) an hour, up from 14 mph earlier Friday, the National Hurricane Center reported at 2 p.m. New York time. Dorian scraped Cape Hatteras, its first U.S. landfall, with maximum winds of 90 mph and driving rains. It will move away from the coast in the next few hours, according to the report.
The hurricane is expected to slowly weaken by Saturday night as it approaches Nova Scotia, Canada. In the meantime, it has drenched the Carolinas, spurred about a dozen tornadoes in the region and caused major flooding. But the southeastern U.S. was largely spared the devastation seen in the Bahamas, hit by Dorian with a 23-foot storm surge, 180-mph winds and driving rains.
On Friday, local authorities said the number of confirmed deaths from the storm would quickly rise from the 30 confirmed, with hundreds of people still unaccounted for. Coroners were embalming bodies after running out of space in coolers, Health Minister Duane Sands said in a radio interview. The final death toll will likely be “staggering,” he said.
Dorian has been one of the most powerful and longest-lasting storms in modern history, churning its way across the Caribbean and the Atlantic for two weeks.
In the Bahamas, authorities and first responders are just starting to assess the damage, sifting through rubble, attics and vegetation in the northern islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, where the storm’s fury was worst.
The combination of dead bodies and raw sewage has contaminated ground water, raising concerns about outbreaks of diseases, which generally begin to show up within four to seven days, according to Sands. Governments and aid groups are airlifting in water, food and medical supplies and setting up clinics on the islands, he said.
Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said in a tweet earlier in the week that he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump and Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who both pledged assistance to Grand Bahama and Abaco.
Dorian also blew the roofs off of five crude-storage tanks at Equinor ASA’s South Riding Point facility in the Bahamas on its march through the islands, the company said in an email, adding that it’s still too early to determine the volume of spilled oil.
The tanks can hold 6.75 million barrels, almost 1 million tons. The terminal was shut Saturday in preparation for the storm and will remained closed until further notice to assess damages, the company said.
Dorian is likely to remain a hurricane as it heads north, rolling past Cape Cod and parts of eastern Maine, said Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger LLC. While "it’s winding down for the Carolinas and most of the U.S., it’s still a well-defined hurricane with a clear eye," he said.
Meanwhile, in parts of the Carolina coastline hardest hit by Dorian, power is slowly being restored. Blackouts that were reported at nearly half a million homes and businesses from Florida to Virginia numbered about 300,000 as 2:45 p.m., according to utility websites. They were concentrated in South Carolina, North Carolina and southeastern Virginia.
Crops in the southeastern region were a serious concern prior to Dorian’s arrival on the coast since the storm was coming at a time when fields were maturing, and high winds could have dealt a devastating blow before farmers have a chance to harvest. But early reports indicated crops such as cotton avoided major problems and livestock plants were running.
“Overall, the storm was not as bad as we thought,” Wayne Boseman, president of the Carolinas Cotton Growers Cooperative Inc., said in an email from Garner, North Carolina.
The storm’s center is now forecast to barrel past extreme southeastern New England tonight and Saturday morning, and then across Nova Scotia late Saturday or Saturday night.
Dorian "will still be a hurricane when it hits Nova Scotia," WeatherTiger’s Truchelut said by telephone. "The waters are much warmer than normal. They can sustain it.”
Dorian is unlikely to be one of the 10 most expensive storms for insurers. Analysts at UBS Group AG estimated the hurricane would spur as much as $10 billion of insured losses overall, a figure placing it outside Swiss Re AG’s list of the 10 worst. UBS cut its estimate from an earlier prediction of $25 billion.
The hurricane could cost the Bahamas alone at least $7 billion in insured and uninsured losses, according to an estimate from risk modeler Karen Clark & Co. The preliminary estimate combines damage to commercial, residential and industrial properties as well as business-interruption expenses, the company said in a report. The figure doesn’t include vehicle losses or damage to infrastructure.
“Dorian will go down in history as the worst catastrophe in this region, not only due to the highest recorded wind speed in the North Atlantic but also because the storm stalled over Abaco and Grand Bahama Island for over 24 hours,” Karen Clark said in its report.
--With assistance from Brian Wingfield, David R. Baker, Sheela Tobben, Andrew Janes, Christopher Martin, Matthew Bristow, Serene Cheong, Dan Murtaugh, Alex Longley, Katherine Chiglinsky, Will Hadfield, Will Wade, Alaric Nightingale, Sharon Cho and Michael Hirtzer.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net;Ezra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.net;Michael McDonald in San Jose, Costa Rica at mmcdonald87@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tina Davis at tinadavis@bloomberg.net, Reg Gale, Christine Buurma
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