AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The wind, the storm surge and the rain have arrived. Hurricane Florence made landfall on the North Carolina coast early this morning.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It came ashore as a Category 1 storm with winds above a hundred miles an hour, and all day it has been moving inland slowly, dumping life-threatening amounts of rain across the Carolinas.
CORNISH: In New Bern, N.C., 72-year-old Carol Chumiso was waiting for a ride. Her home was under evacuation orders, but in 15 years in New Bern, she's never once evacuated. This morning she opened the door to find ankle-deep water outside her house and decided she better get out. A neighbor gave her a ride to the fire station.
CAROL CHUMISO: You never know what the hell's going to happen. You can assume that it might keep coming. You want to be the hell out of there. So I'm out of there now. I'm here, waiting to go somewhere.
CORNISH: Maybe to her daughter's place. Before leaving her home, she grabbed just a couple of things.
CHUMISO: My ID - that's all, my ID and some shoes to put on. That's it.
SHAPIRO: Meanwhile, down the coast in Leland, N.C., Dyion Skipper is staying put on his 15-acre spread. It has been in his family since the 1800s. When we spoke to him earlier, one thing he was keeping dry was his sense of humor.
DYION SKIPPER: I've got horses, chickens, dogs, cats, ducks and a wife. I should have put her first.
SHAPIRO: He has seen some damage to his place but feels OK for now in his home.
SKIPPER: I have friends that have called me. About every 15 minutes, somebody's calling to want to know how we're doing.
CORNISH: As Florence moves inland, the threat is catastrophic flooding. Remember how Houston flooded after Hurricane Harvey last year. Meteorologist Jeff Huffman says there are now similar concerns with the tremendous amounts of rain projected to fall through the weekend and into next week.
JEFF HUFFMAN: There are certainly going to be some areas that are going to come close to the Harvey numbers. It's a little early to speculate if we're going to surpass those numbers, but the forecast at least in terms of the magnitude is very similar, and it's been a similar setup. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.