AccuWeather Ready Program Offers Prep & Recovery Information Online as Hurricane Florence Nears East Coast

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Sept. 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — AccuWeather Global Weather Center — With Hurricane Florence intensifying, South Carolina has ordered mandatory evacuations for about 1 million people along the state’s entire 187-mile coastline beginning Tuesday. States of emergency have been declared in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, but the impact of the storm has the potential to reach much further.

AccuWeather—the world’s largest, fastest-growing and most trusted provider of weather forecasts and warnings—wants people to be “AccuWeather Ready” for whatever Florence brings.

“There’s never been a storm like Florence. It was located farther north in the Atlantic than any other storm to ever hit the Carolinas, so what we’re forecasting is unprecedented. Also, most storms coming into the Carolinas tend to move northward, and this storm looks like it’s going to stall over the region and potentially bring tremendous, life-threatening flooding,” AccuWeather Vice President of Forecasting and Graphics Operations Marshall Moss said.

Downloading the free AccuWeather app will help people to stay up-to-date with Florence’s expected track and impacts to the U.S. In addition, the AccuWeather Ready site at http://accuweather.com/ready offers a wealth of information and useful content to help people prepare for the storm, including safety tips and resources, personalized weather preparedness plans, detailed checklists, educational weather news and videos, facts about potential health impacts, and more.

AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said that a Florence landfall along the U.S. East coast is becoming more likely, with the Carolinas at greatest risk on Thursday.

“Residents and interests living along and near the Carolina coast and even up toward the Virginia Capes should closely monitor Florence and be ready to put their hurricane plan in place,” Kottlowski said. “If you do not have a hurricane plan in place, do so immediately.”

Resources available on the AccuWeather Ready site include:

• An extensive hurricane preparation checklist to help keep people safe and out of harm’s way and to protect property.
• A detailed checklist on ways to help people affected by hurricanes.
• An infographic on recovering from a hurricane.
• Information about the psychological impact of disasters such as hurricanes.
• Facts about tropical storms, hurricanes, and their risks.
• A fact sheet on tropical storms and checklists to help you prepare for them.

By providing forecasts and warnings with an unchallenged and verified margin of Superior Accuracy™, AccuWeather helps save more lives, keeps more people safe, and helps people and companies plan more effectively for all types of hazardous weather-including hurricanes, tropical storms, excessive heat and humidity, lightning, heavy rains and wind, lightning, flooding and tornadoes. The AccuWeather Ready initiative was designed to take this commitment even further by providing weather preparedness updates and tools when they matter the most, personalizing the weather so people can improve their lives.

AccuWeather’s proven Superior Accuracy is trusted by 245 of the Fortune 500 companies it serves as well as thousands of other businesses and government agencies around the world. In the most comprehensive study of forecast accuracy ever undertaken, AccuWeather was overwhelmingly reconfirmed by independent industry tracker ForecastWatch as the world’s most accurate source of weather forecasts in the categories of precipitation, wind, and high-temperature forecasts.

In the study, AccuWeather’s probability of precipitation forecasts, which are key to MinuteCast forecasts, were 21% more accurate than those of the next-ranked provider and 23% more accurate than the average of all other sources in the study. Further proving the reliability and consistency of AccuWeather forecasts, ForecastWatch found AccuWeather was the clear winner in wind speed forecast accuracy, proving to be 33% more accurate than the nearest provider of weather forecasts and 41% more accurate than the average of all other sources examined.

The AccuWeather Ready program demonstrates AccuWeather’s continued leadership as a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador. NOAA named AccuWeather as one of its first Ambassadors in the weather enterprise initiative, launched in 2014 to recognize organizations committed to helping the nation be better prepared for, respond to, and recover from weather-related disasters. AccuWeather and NOAA have been partners for many years. The company has supported NOAA and National Weather Service (NWS) budgets in testimony and presentations before the United States Congress and with the Office of Management and Budget, as well as other federal agencies. AccuWeather has been a longtime cooperation partner with NOAA. 

About AccuWeather, Inc. and AccuWeather.com
More than 1.5 billion people worldwide rely on AccuWeather to help them plan their lives, protect their businesses, and get more from their day. AccuWeather provides hourly and Minute by Minute™ forecasts with Superior Accuracy™ with customized content and engaging video presentations available on smartphones, tablets, free wired and mobile Internet sites, connected TVs, and Internet appliances, as well as via radio, television, and newspapers. Established in 1962 by Founder, President, and Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers–a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society who was recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in American history by Entrepreneur Magazine’s Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs–AccuWeather also delivers a wide range of highly customized enterprise solutions to media, business, government, and institutions, as well as news, weather content, and video for more than 180,000 third-party websites.

Download the AccuWeather app today and follow AccuWeather on Facebook and Twitter for the most up-to-date forecasts and warnings, news and information surrounding breaking and spring weather. Visit www.AccuWeather.com for additional information.