This archive report was first published on 6 September 2019.
Published on September 6, 2019, at 6:10 PM ET, Hurricane Dorian made landfall on North Carolina's Outer Banks, bringing heavy rain and wind to the region.
The Category 1 storm passed over Cape Hatteras in the Outer Banks at 8:35 a.m. on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. The storm is now moving quickly northeast and heading away from land, but the Outer Banks endured hurricane-force winds and rapidly rising water levels.
As the storm made landfall, Pam Anderson, a dog kennel owner in the Outer Banks, hunkered down with her dogs, renting a generator and hauling in an air mattress to ensure their safety. She set her alarm for every two hours to check on the storm and prepared for wind gusts of up to 100 miles per hour.
Leslie Lanier, a local bookstore owner, was sheltering inside her boarded-up home on Friday morning, where she was 'sick with worry.' The water was higher than she had ever seen it, and she was unable to make assessments due to the storm's severity.
At least four people had died in the southeastern United States while preparing for the storm, according to The Associated Press. Officials in Dare County, N.C., warned of shifting winds and the possibility of extreme flooding on Friday.
As the storm moved northeast, it brought tropical-storm-force winds to southeastern Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula. Tropical storm warnings were posted from North Carolina to Fenwick Island, Del., and for Chesapeake Bay south of Drum Point, Md.
Meanwhile, in Wilmington, N.C., the bands of rain that had pelted the city in sporadic bursts for much of Thursday turned into a sustained, breezy shower on Friday. Water overflowed ditches and filled some cul-de-sacs, but most of the city's roads were passable, and no injuries had been reported.
At the North Chase apartments in Wilmington, a neighborhood whose properties were damaged in Hurricane Florence, water skimmed across several roads, and many of the ditches were filled to the brim with water. A nearby electronic sign flashed intermittently between two messages: 'Be safe!' and 'Not even your mom loves you, Dorian!'
As the storm continued to move northeast, its powerful winds gradually slowed and spread out over a wider area. The center of the storm was headed offshore and unlikely to veer significantly left toward land, but much of southeastern Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula will be lashed with tropical-storm-force winds.
Finally, in a dimly lit church in Wilmington, Fernando Lopez monitored Hurricane Dorian as coffee brewed and children played tick-tack-toe. For several days, Mr. Lopez and other leaders of the First Brigade U.S. Christian Church had lived inside the church, translating emergency updates into Spanish for the Hispanic ministry's followers.
