Hurricane Florence Churns Toward Bermuda As Gordon Soaks U.S.
(CBS) -- Hurricane Florence became the first major storm of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season Wednesday as it moved on a path that could take it toward Bermuda.
Florence has been downgraded to a category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 115 mph.
The eye of the hurricane is centered about less about 1,170 miles east-southeast of Bermuda as Florence moves in a northwest direction at 12 mph.
That path is expected to continue through the night, when it's forward speed is expected to decrease in speed.
Sustained winds have decreased from 130 mph Wednesday when Florence was classified as a Category 4 hurricane.
While the storm is expected to continue to weaken, the National Hurricane Center expects it to remain a strong hurricane for the next several days.
Tropical Depression #Gordon Advisory 17: Gordon Continues to Drift Through Southeastern Arkansas. https://t.co/VqHn0u1vgc
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 6, 2018
If Florence continues its current track across the Atlantic, it is likely to hit Bermuda.
It should also miss Puerto Rico – located nearly 1,600 miles southwest – who started the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season with 11,000 still without power restored from Hurricane Maria last year. The situation was recently criticized in a federal report.
Hurricane Florence Warnings and Watches
The National Hurricane Center has not yet issued any coastal watches or warnings as of their 5 p.m. ET advisory.
But Florence is expected to generate potentially life-threatening surf swells and rip current conditions that will begin to affect Bermuda by Friday.
In the U.S., Tropical Storm Gordon never became a hurricane but it was still deadly, killing a child by blowing a tree onto a mobile home as it made landfall. The storm later weakened into a depression on Wednesday but remained dangerous, dumping rain, spawning tornadoes and kicking up heavy surf in its wake.
The hurricane center said Gordon was weakening on a path into Arkansas after striking the coast at 70 mph, just shy of hurricane strength, near Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The remnants will likely cause flash flooding across parts of seven states and as far north as Iowa in the coming days.
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