Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas Sunday, Sept. 1, as a Category 5 storm and the second most powerful Atlantic storm in recorded history. The massive storm fluctuated between Category 5 and tropical storm classification for almost a week as it slowly made its way up the coast of the East US.
\nWhile Dorian\u2019s effects may not be physically felt in Arkansas, many students from areas in the storm\u2019s path have been left dependent on their families and weather notifications for updates, feeling an emotional burden.
\nSenior Abishai Beneby is from Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas. His mother, father and two brothers weathered the storm as it battered its way through the islands. Beneby said that, luckily, Nassau was not affected as drastically as other locations.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re fine,\u201d Beneby said. \u201cI was worried about them for a minute because I didn\u2019t hear anything back for longer than they usually take, so I was worried. Then she responded to me.\u201d
\nAccording to NBC, Dorian\u2019s drastically slow pace has played a major role in the level of destruction brought about, especially to the Bahamas. The storm pummeled the island nation for almost two full days before moving on, crawling for 15 hours at only 1 mile per hour, NBC reported.
\nAs of early Thursday morning, Dorian had moved past Florida with less damage than was initially feared and began affecting the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas. In a statement made on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump said Florida came out of the storm much better than predicted.
\n\u201cWe had actually our original chart was that it was going to be hitting Florida directly,\u201d Trump said in the statement from the White House on Wednesday. \u201cIt was going to be hitting directly and that would have affected a lot of other states. And it took a right turn and ultimately, hopefully, we\u2019re going to be lucky.\u201d
\nJunior Kaitlyn Cutshall from Vero Beach, Florida, said storm preparations are nothing new to her and her family. She said her family usually prepares enough to weather out storms in place, with their last evacuation taking place in 2004. For Dorian, however, her family evacuated inland when the predictions seemed bad.
\nCutshall said being away from her family while they prepared for and dealt with the slow-moving hurricane was challenging.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s been pretty hard, just because I\u2019m not there helping prepare for the hurricane,\u201d Cutshall said. \u201cAnd just not constantly knowing exactly what\u2019s going on, because I have to find out through texts, or I have to keep up with The Weather Channel, and I just wish I was there with everyone.\u201d
\nAs of 10 a.m. Thursday morning, Dorian moving up the coast toward Charleston, South Carolina after slightly weakening overnight to a strong Category 2 storm, according to CBS.
\nCNN reported 20 confirmed deaths in the Bahamas and predicted the Carolinas would face dangerous flooding beginning Thursday. As the storm reached these coastal states, over 240,000 power outages were confirmed in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina by mid-morning on Thursday, with most in South Carolina.
\nCutshall said she is thankful her family is safe and that Dorian avoided direct landfall with Florida, but that the situation is still scary for many.
\n\u201c[Pray] for protection and guidance, and with any of the families that are being affected directly to be prepared for whatever happens,\u201d Cutshall said. \u201cYou never know what the hurricane is going to do.\u201d
\nHurricane Dorian is a developing storm. This article was written and published as of 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5. To stay updated on storm conditions, check local and national news networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas Sunday, Sept. 1, as a Category 5 storm and the second most powerful Atlantic storm in recorded history. The massive storm fluctuated between…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102,"featured_media":13378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}