By Thursday night, more than 80,000 homes and businesses were without electricity. Early today, Matthew was expected to blow ashore north of Palm Beach County, which has about 1.4 million people, and then slowly push north for the next 12 hours along the Interstate 95 corridor through Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. As Matthew put the U.S. in its sights, about 2 million people were encouraged to head inland ahead of the most powerful storm to threaten the Atlantic coast in more than a decade. At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA no longer has to worry about rolling space shuttles back from the launch pad to the hangar because of hurricanes, since the shuttle fleet is now retired. Even though the damage in south Florida was not as bad as it could be, there are people who have been affected and they are going to need help.”

The storm was originally expected to have a greater and more dangerous impact on the state. The last Category 3 storm or higher to hit the United States was Wilma in October 2005. The storm’s eye has become slightly disorganized as it dropped to a Category 3 hurricane with winds of about 120 mph. They said the major threat to the Southeast would not be the winds — which newer buildings can withstand — but the massive surge of seawater that could wash over coastal communities along a 500-mile stretch from South Florida to the Charleston, South Carolina, area. Rick Scott said that Florida Fish and Wildlife officers are conducting searches in areas where the storm has passed, and no issues have been found. I am in Orlando for wrestling shows and when the Florida governor came on the news to issue a statement, saying: “You must leave now, before it’s too late,” I thought it would have been time to get out of here. Both the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports as well as the Port Everglades cruise ship terminal were expected to reopen on Friday.
Hurricane Matthew moves towards the United States with hundreds of thousands of people being evacuated from the states of Florida and South Carolina.