Five people have been killed as Florence mauls the US East Coast, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of homes and downing trees.
The weather event has been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm but forecasters still warn of life-threatening storm surges.
Winds of up to 70mph (110km/h) are also expected for several days as the weather system slowly grinds over.
Evacuation warnings have been in place for 1.7 million people in the area.
All five deaths were reported in North Carolina and they include; a mother and her infant killed in Wilmington when a tree fell on their home on Friday.
Officials say the child’s father was also transported to hospital for injuries; two men in their 70s killed in Lenoir County.
One was killed when connecting an electrical generator, and family members say another man was killed in a wind-related death when checking on dogs outside his property and a woman who died from cardiac arrest in the town of Hampstead after emergency responders had their route to her blocked by downed trees, according to a county official.
The storm originally made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Friday morning as a category one hurricane.
Reports quote US officials as saying it remains extremely dangerous because of the risks posed by catastrophic flooding.
Forecasters say the storm surge, together with up to 3.5ft (1m) of rain over the next few days, could spawn a slow-motion disaster.
Some parts of North Carolina have already seen surges as high as 10ft in places.
Governor Cooper said the hurricane was likely to “continue its violent grind across the state for days.”
Forecasters say it is now moving into eastern South Carolina, crawling along at just 3mph.
It is expected to dump 18 trillion gallons of rainwater on US soil, meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted.
Almost 800,000 people are reported to be without power already in North Carolina, and officials have warned restoring electricity could take days or even weeks.
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Typhoon Mangkhut: Philippines hit by strongest storm
The world’s strongest storm this year, Super Typhoon Mangkhut, is blasting the northern coast of the Philippines with strong winds and heavy rain.
Reports say it broke windows and downed power lines on the island of Luzon before dawn.
More than four million people are directly in the path of the storm, which has winds of 200km/h (125 mph) and gusts reaching up to 330km/h.
Thousands have been evacuated amid warnings of 6m (20ft) storm surges.
Officials have warned there may be “very heavy damage” to vulnerable structures.
They have raised alert levels to the second-highest – signal four – in Cagayan, northern Isabela, Apayao and Abra provinces.
The deadliest storm on record in the Philippines was Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which also sparked category four alerts.
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It killed more than 7,000 people and affected millions.
The typhoon made landfall at Baggao, in the north-east of the country, at about 01:40 local time on Saturday (17:40 GMT on Friday).
The storm – known locally as Ompong – is travelling north-west at about 35km/h (20 mph).
“In terms of strength, Typhoon Mangkhut is the strongest tropical cyclone of the year,” the World Meteorological Organization said.
The typhoon is forecast to keep heading west, passing through Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon.
Hong Kong authorities have warned urged residents to stay indoors when the storm approaches, and weather experts say it may be the strongest tropical storm to hit the territory in decades.
