Dorian gains fury but could spare Florida a direct hit

Associated Press

MIAMI

Hurricane Dorian powered toward Florida with increasing fury Friday – but also indications that it might just skirt the U.S. coastline and spare it from the devastating direct hit that forecasters have been fearing for days.

Forecasters warned that no one is out of danger and Dorian could still wallop the state with “extremely dangerous” 140 mph winds and torrential rains late Monday or early Tuesday, with millions of people in the crosshairs along with Walt Disney World and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

But some of the more reliable computer models predicted a turn northward that would have Dorian hug the coast, delivering a glancing blow, the National Hurricane Center said.

“We could still be talking about a notable loss but nothing remotely close to if we had a direct hit,” said meteorologist Steve Bowen, global head of catastrophe insights for the reinsurance firm Aon.

Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters said: “There is hope.”

The faint, encouraging signs came at the end of a day in which Dorian seemed to get scarier with each forecast update. It strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane in the afternoon, and there were fears it could prove to be the most powerful hurricane to hit Florida’s east coast in nearly 30 years.

Late Friday, the National Hurricane Center’s projected new track showed Dorian hitting near Fort Pierce, some 70 miles north of Mar-a-Lago, then running along the coastline as it moved north. But forecasters cautioned that the storm’s track was still highly uncertain and even a small deviation could put Dorian offshore or well inland.

Trump declared a state of emergency in Florida and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster-relief efforts.

“This is big and is growing and it still has some time to get worse,” Julio Vasquez said at a Miami fast-food joint next to a gas station that had run out of fuel. “No one knows what can really happen. This is serious.”

As Dorian closed in, it played havoc with people’s Labor Day weekend plans. Major airlines began allowing travelers to change their reservations without a fee. The big cruise lines began rerouting their ships. Disney World and the other resorts in Orlando found themselves in the storm’s projected path.

Jessica Armesto and her 1-year-old daughter, Mila, had planned to have breakfast with Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy at Disney World. Instead, Armesto decided to take shelter at her mother’s hurricane-resistant house in Miami with its kitchen full of nonperishable foods.

“It felt like it was better to be safe than sorry, so we canceled our plans,” she said.