WILSON: Florence drenched North Carolina with yet more rain on Sunday and officials warned residents that “the worst is yet to come” from a storm that has killed at least 14 people, as rivers inland were likely to flood.

Florence, which crashed into the state as a hurricane on Friday, had weakened to a tropical depression by Sunday morning but was forecast to drop another 5 to 10 inches of rain in North Carolina, bringing rainfall totals in some inland areas to 15 to 20 inches and even more in some places, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The most rain so far from Florence was 33.9 inches in Swansboro, North Carolina, a new record for a single hurricane in the state. The previous record was 24 inches, set by Hurricane Floyd, which killed 56 people in 1999, said Bryce Link, a meteorologist with private forecasting service DTN Marine Weather.

In North Carolina, more than 900 people were rescued from rising flood waters and 15,000 remained in shelters, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper told a news conference on Sunday. At least 10 people have died so far in the storm in North Carolina, state officials said.

In Fayetteville, a North Carolina city of about 210,000 people some 145 km inland, authorities told thousands of residents near the Cape Fear River and Little River to get out of their homes by Sunday afternoon because of the flood risk.

“If you are refusing to leave during this mandatory evacuation, you need to do things like notify your legal next of kin because the loss of life is very, very possible,” Mayor Mitch Colvin said at a news conference on Saturday. “The worst is yet to come,” he added.

The White House said President Donald Trump approved making federal funding available in some affected counties. Trump, who plans to visit the region this week and he tweeted his “deepest sympathies and warmth” to the families and friends of those who died.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2018