In the US, up to 1.7 million people in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia have been given voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Florence, emergency management officials said.

Forecasters are predicting that Florence will make landfall in the Carolinas tomorrow or early Friday. The National Hurricane Center,  NHC said Florence is expected to be an “extremely dangerous major hurricane” when it makes landfall bringing life-threatening storm surge to coastal areas.

Briefing from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump urged people to heed orders to evacuate.

The NHC  said last night (2330 IST), that  Florence was packing winds of 215 kilometres per hour. It was located 1,360 km east-southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina and moving at 28 kph in a west-northwest direction.