Hurricane Florence is making its presence known across North Carolina. The massive storm is expected to make landfall in southeast North Carolina early Friday morning.

Read Singleton and his wife Terri are both Orange High School graduates who have been living along North Carolina’s coast for nearly a decade. They currently live in Southport, which is expected to be very near the eye of the storm as it eventually makes landfall.

The Singletons are staying in Southport and attempting to ride out the storm.

“We sent our daughter to Charlotte a couple of days ago when they first started with the evacuations,” Read Singleton said in a phone interview Thursday morning. He added that several neighbors chose not to evacuate, even though evacuation orders were issued for much of North Carolina’s coast.

“We’re all a little bit nervous just because the talk on the radio and TV and everything else is pretty serious,” Singleton said. “It’s a big storm, and they’re really talking it up as being the storm of the century. So, there’s obviously a little bit of nervousness amongst us, but, at the same time, there’s comfort in numbers.”

Singleton said his family had not evacuated for any storms since moving to the coast. But he added they were taking extra cautionary steps with Florence, boarding up the windows for the first time.

There is some comfort, Singleton said, from having conversations with neighbors leading up to the storm who have been in the area for decades and never evacuated their homes. But it is the fear of what Singleton described as “the unknown” that generates more anxiety.

“[The wind] is definitely starting to pick up,” Singleton said around 11:15 Thursday morning. “I’m watching the trees kind of blow back and forth a little bit and leaves blowing across the yard and the anxiousness is definitely picking up a little bit.”

Photo via Read Singleton

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