CHARLOTTE, NC vs FLORENCE - EXTREME FLOODING THIS WEEKEND (RED CROSS & FEMA)

CHARLOTTE, NC vs HURRICANE FLORENCE - RISK OF EXTREME FLOODING THIS WEEKEND:

EMERGENCY SHELTERS & MEALS FOR EVACUEES, ELDERLY/ DISABLED (RED CROSS & FEMA).

FLORENCE DOWNGRADES TO CATEGORY 2 BUT STILL VERY DANGEROUS.

PREPARE & CONTINUE TO PRAY (PSALM 91).


Post Sources: Charlotte Observer, Fox News, Youtube


***** Charlotte at ‘extreme’ risk for flooding this weekend


Friday, 8:35 a.m. There’s little deviation in the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. track for Florence, which shows the storm is expected to move south and west across South Carolina through Saturday before turning north and west into North Carolina.

The storm is expected to cross the Columbia, S.C. region on Saturday. Charlotte is in line for 10 to 15 inches of rain and potential tropical storm-force winds, the National Hurricane Center predicts.

Friday, 8 a.m.

The National Weather Service’s Greer, S.C. office is predicting Charlotte will receive a massive deluge this weekend as Florence moves inland. That’s elevated the risk for flooding to “extreme” in Charlotte and the surrounding counties for Saturday and Sunday.

A flash flood watch will be in effect this weekend for most of the region. The Charlotte area could receive a foot or more of rain, the weather service is predicting.

Florence’s 5 a.m. track from the National Hurricane Center shows the storm moving across Columbia, S.C. on Saturday afternoon, before turning northwest and heading for North Carolina. That would bring it near the Charlotte region as a tropical storm or tropical depression, dumping heavy rain before moving into Tennessee and Virginia early Monday.

Florence drops to Cat 1, but still ‘life-threatening’

Thursday, 11 p.m.: Florence was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane but was delivering “life-threatening storm surge” along the NC coast, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Florence had 90 mph winds, and the “threat of freshwater flooding will increase” in the days ahead, according to the advisory. The storm was about 60 miles east of Wilmington.

Islamic Center opens doors to evacuees

Thursday, 9:24 p.m.: The Islamic Center of Charlotte, 1700 Progress Lane, tweeted that it is partnering with United Muslim Relief to provide fresh water and basic aid packs to evacuees and is “opening our doors as a shelter ... to help those in need.“

Charlotte braces for more rain than expected

Thursday, 8:21 p.m.: Charlotte’s airport can expect 10.83 inches of rain during Florence, according to the latest projected rainfall totals from the National Weather Service office in Greer, S.C. That’s up significantly from Wednesday’s NWS estimate of 6.3 inches.

Areas to the south and east of Charlotte could see even more rain and flooding — 14.5 inches in Monroe, 13.67 inches in Concord, 14.7 inches in Albemarle and 18.46 inches in Anson County, said meteorologist Doug Outlaw of the National Weather Service in Greer, S.C.

Higher amounts also are forecast for cities to the west of Charlotte, with Gastonia at 9.64 inches, Lincolnton 8.78 inches and Shelby 6.8 inches.

The mountains should see far smaller amounts, according to Outlaw, with only 3.54 inches anticipated in Asheville.

Government offices to close at noon Friday

Thursday, 5:03 p.m.: City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County government offices will close at noon Friday ahead of the storm, the city and county announced in a joint news release.

CharMeck 311 and 911 emergency services will remain active. CharMeck 311 will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Storm emergency updates: http://charlottenc.gov/emergency/Pages/default.aspx .

Volunteers respond to call to deliver meals to shut-ins

Thursday, 4:52 p.m.: Friendship Trays, the nonprofit that provides meals for shut-ins, the elderly and people who can’t cook for themselves, was overwhelmed with help Thursday after putting out word on social media that they needed volunteer drivers, said executive director Lucy Carter Bush. So many people stepped up, they couldn’t answer all the messages.

“It was wild,” she said. “We got what we needed and then some.”

Friendship Trays was delivering both meals and emergency packs with canned goods, to make sure their clients could get through the weekend.

Monday is still up in the air, Bush said. Since no one knows how conditions will develop over the weekend, she doesn’t yet know if they’ll be able to make deliveries. If they can, they will need more volunteers, she said.

They’ll post updates on the website, www.friendships.org, and through a recording on their phone line, 704-333-9229.

Mecklenburg County jail inmates allowed free calls

Thursday, 4:33 p.m.: Sheriff Irwin Carmichael approved a request from Global Tel Link Inc. to offer inmates two free 5-minute phone calls per day Thursday through Saturday.

“We know how important it is to get reassurances from loved ones that they are taking the necessary steps to prepare,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Plenty of space at Red Cross shelters

Thursday, 4 p.m.: The Observer visited each of the Charlotte area’s five Red Cross shelters on Thursday, and all five had plenty of space available.

The busiest, at East Mecklenburg High School, had only about a quarter of its beds occupied at midday. Several shelters were almost empty Thursday.

All of the shelters accept pets, and by 4 p.m. Thursday, the North Mecklenburg High shelter was housing two dogs, two cats and a bearded dragon.

Islamic Center opens doors to evacuees

Thursday, 9:24 p.m.: The Islamic Center of Charlotte, 1700 Progress Lane, tweeted that it is partnering with United Muslim Relief to provide fresh water and basic aid packs to evacuees and is “opening our doors as a shelter ... to help those in need.“

CharMeck 311 and 911 emergency services will remain active. CharMeck 311 will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Storm emergency updates: http://charlottenc.gov/emergency/Pages/default.aspx .

Moon Water! NASA's Moon Blast Was A Success!...Theory: Science Or Religion? (Noah's Ark Flood)

NASA: Water like any other water on Moon. NASA officials discuss water being discovered on the moon, and what form it may take on, and below the surface.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

NASA's moon blast lands with a thud. NASA's highly touted crash landing on the moon may have been a dud for viewers, but scientists said Friday it will help them gather a wealth of information. NBC's Tom Costello reports.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Significant amount of water found on Moon


It's official: There's water ice on the moon, and lots of it. When melted, the water could potentially be used to drink or to extract hydrogen for rocket fuel.

NASA's LCROSS probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month, mission scientists announced Friday. The findings confirm suspicions reported previously, and in a big way.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The LCROSS probe impacted the lunar south pole at a crater called Cabeus on Oct. 9. The $79 million spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, hit the lunar surface in an effort to create a debris plume that could be analyzed by scientists for signs of water ice.

Those signs were visible in the data from spectrographic measurements (which measure light absorbed at different wavelengths, revealing different compounds) of the Centaur stage crater and the two-part debris plume created by the impact. The signature of water was seen in both infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopic measurements.

"We see evidence for the water in two instruments," Colaprete said. "And that's what makes us really confident in our findings right now."

How much?

Based on the measurements, the team estimated that there was about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of water in the view of their instruments, which took in the area of the impact crater (about 80 feet or 20 meters across) and the ejecta blanket (about 200 to 260 feet across, or 60 to 80 meters), Colaprete said. That amount of water is roughly the equivalent of a dozen 2-gallon buckets.

"I'm pretty impressed by the amount of water we saw in our little 20-meter crater," Colaprete said.

"What's really exciting is we've only hit one spot. It's kind of like when you're drilling for oil. Once you find it one place, there's a greater chance you'll find more nearby," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

This water finding doesn't mean that the moon is wet by Earth's standards, but is likely wetter than the driest deserts on Earth, Colaprete said. And even this small amount is valuable to possible future missions, said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters.

Scientists have long suspected that permanently shadowed craters at the south pole of the moon could be cold enough to keep water frozen at the surface, based on detections of hydrogen by previous moon missions. Water has already been detected on the moon by a NASA-built instrument on board India's now-defunct Chandrayaan-1 probe and other spacecraft, though it was in very small amounts and bound to the dirt and dust of the lunar surface.

Water wasn't the only compound seen in the debris plumes of the LCROSS impact.

"There's a lot of stuff in there," Colaprete said. What exactly those other compounds are hasn't yet been determined, but the ingredients could include organic materials that would hint at comet impacts in the past.

More questions

The findings show that "the lunar poles are sort of record keepers" of lunar history and solar system history, said Greg Delory, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Center for Integrative Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Delory explained that these permanently shadowed regions are very cold, "and that means that they tend to trap and keep things that encounter them. ... So they have a story to tell about the history of the moon and the solar system climate."

"This is ice that's potentially been there for billions of years," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator at Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

The confirmation that water exists on the moon isn't the end of the story, though. One key question to answer is where the water came from. Several theories have been put forward to explain the origin of the water, including debris from comet impacts, interaction of the lunar surface with the solar wind, and even giant molecular clouds passing through the solar system, Delory said.

Scientists want to examine the data further to figure out what state the water is in. Colaprete said that based on initial observations, it is likely water ice is interspersed between dirt particles on the lunar surface.

Delory said scientists also want to figure out what kinds of processes move, destroy and create the water on the surface, and how long the water has been there.

Link to Chandrayaan?

Scientists are looking to see if there is any link between the water observed by LCROSS and that discovered by Chandrayaan-1.

"Their observation is entirely unique and complementary to what we did," Colaprete said. Scientists still need to work out whether the water observed by Chandrayaan-1 might be slowly migrating to the poles, or if it is unrelated.

Bottom line, the discovery completely changes scientists' view of the moon, Wargo said. The discovery gives "a much bigger, potentially complicated picture for water on the moon" than what was thought even just a few months ago, he said.

"This is not your father's moon," Wargo said. "This is not a dead planetary body, but one with a lot of dynamism in it."

Let's go?

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 for extended missions on the lunar surface. Finding usable amounts of ice on the moon would be a boon for that effort since it could be a vital local resource to support a lunar base.

"Water really is one of the constituents of one of the most powerful rocket fuels, oxygen and hydrogen," Wargo said.

The water LCROSS detected "would be water you could drink, water like any other water," Colaprete said. "If you could clean it, it would be drinkable water."

The impact was observed by LCROSS's sister spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as other space and ground-based telescopes.

The debris plume from the impacts was not seen right away and was only revealed a week after the impact, when mission scientists had had time to comb through the probe's data.

NASA launched LCROSS — short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — and LRO in June.


Sources: NASA, MSNBC, National Geographic, Youtube