Hurricane Michael rapidly gained strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday night and continued to intensify Wednesday morning, threatening to become the most intense hurricane on record to strike the Florida Panhandle. The dangerous Category 4 hurricane has winds up to 145 mph, and is predicted to make landfall Wednesday afternoon.

Tropical Storm Michael has strengthened overnight and is nearing hurricane-force winds on Monday morning as it sets its sights on the Florida Panhandle.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott already declared a state of emergency in 26 counties in the northern part of the state on Sunday.

Many home and business owners in the Pee Dee are filing insurance claims to help pay for the damage that Hurricane Florence left behind. One of those businesses is Latta Feeding Farms. The owner, Jamie Deaver, says it wasn’t floodwaters that damaged his store, it was the wind.

Now that Hurricane Florence has pummeled the southeastern coastline with dozens of inches of rain, lashing winds, and flooded rivers, homeowners and insurers are scrambling to survey the damage to properties.

As many as 8,000 people in and around the city of Georgetown, South Carolina, have been urged to evacuate ahead severe flooding expected this week from two rain-gorged rivers in what may be the final destructive chapter of Hurricane Florence.

Residents in Georgetown County, South Carolina, where five rivers flow into the ocean, will prepare on Friday for a deluge of water in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which has killed more than 40 people.

Ronald Rabon’s family has been farming their Aynor property for four generations, but Mother Nature is getting in the way of the only job Rabon has ever known. Rabon, the 63-year-old owner and operator of Double R Farms off Valley Forge Road, is facing a devastated crop yield for the third time in four years after Hurricane Florence brought copious rain and salt air onto his roughly 1,300-acre farm.

In the days following Hurricane Florence’s assault on the south-eastern coast of the US, some experts are already predicting $2.5 billion in insured losses. However, this wasn’t the season’s first severe storm — Lane hit Hawaii just a few weeks before and while the devastation wasn’t as significant on the island, the hurricane did outpace Florence in some metrics.

From 1 to 5, the numbers we use to categorize hurricanes are ingrained in the minds of millions of Americans from Texas to Maine. But the famed 47-year-old Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, which only measures wind speed, may not be the best way to gauge a storm’s ferocity.

With the remnants of Hurricane Florence continuing to deluge the southeastern U.S., a small army of drones is being deployed to identify and fix damage caused by flooding.

The head of the National Flood Insurance Program told CNBC’s "Squawk on the Street" Monday that the government is prepared to handle the anticipated rash of claims filed by homeowners in the upcoming days and weeks.

Rising flood waters threatened communities across the Carolinas on Tuesday as storm Florence hit the U.S. Northeast with heavy rains and tornadoes after killing at least 32 people.

As Hurricane Florence surged toward land last week, meteorologists and emergency agencies took notice. The storm was a Category 4 hurricane, the second-strongest type, and it was drawing a bead on the Carolina coast.

The drenching rains and massive flooding caused by Florence are expected to inflict a high financial toll on homeowners in North Carolina and other states, as only a small percentage are covered by flood insurance that could help offset the costs of rebuilding their damaged homes.

The number of Americans with flood insurance is on the rise, yet Hurricane Florence is likely to make it painfully clear that too many homeowners in the Carolinas and other vulnerable regions remain unprotected.