【My Sister in law Reluctantly Climbed on Top】

Hurricane Florence has done something strange.

The My Sister in law Reluctantly Climbed on TopCategory 4 storm -- which is expected to make landfall somewhere in the Southeastern U.S. on early Friday morning as a major hurricane -- has broken with a 170-year long history of Atlantic hurricanes to now target the United States.

Since 1851, there have been 33 named-storms that churned within 100 miles of Florence's position in the middle of the Atlantic. None of them, according to a tweet from hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach, ever made landfall in the U.S.

But some unusual weather is steering Florence westward, straight into the U.S.

"All its friends of years gone by have all been going to the north, while this one is going to the west," Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said in an interview.

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Specifically, a potent mass of high pressure over the Atlantic has blocked Florence from traveling north, away from the U.S.

"Usually storms that are located there are already recurving toward the north," said McNoldy. "This an anomalous storm."

Coming back to life

Last Thursday, Florence had lost its status as a hurricane, weakening to a tropical storm, which has sustained maximum winds speeds of less than 74 mph.

"It weakened significantly," said McNoldy.

The storm passed through an area of powerful wind shear -- winds that hit storms at their sides, and weaken a hurricane's strength. But as meteorologists predicted, Florence made it through this temporary threat.

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"As soon as it got out of that [shear] it began to regain strength," said McNoldy. "There's nothing to inhibit it now."

What's more, hurricanes feed off of warmer ocean waters, and Florence has now entered an area of the Atlantic with waters that are typically warm enough to support a hurricane. But right now, these already-warm waters are even warmer than usual, noted McNoldy.

The ocean temperatures Florence will pass through will peak near 85 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

"That certainly doesn't help the situation," McNoldy said.

The end result is that the NHC forecasts a powerful, destructive storm hitting the Southeastern U.S. early Friday with intense wind speeds of 145 mph, which are then expected to fall to around 85 mph after moving inland.

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But from there, the situation will likely grow worse.

There are no influential weather systems, like the high-pressure system that steered Florence toward the U.S. in the first place, to keep it moving along. This portends heavy rainfall and flooding as the storm stalls over the area.

"That's actually what happened last year for Hurricane Harvey," said McNoldy, noting that Harvey stagnated over Houston and dropped historic rainfall on southeastern Texas, becoming the second-most costly hurricane in U.S. history.

As for Florence in the Southeastern U.S., "It could remain in place for the entire weekend," said McNoldy.

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