Before the first arrived, Hurricane Florence's sharp winds and historic rainfall came first for New Bern, N.C., a gracious 300-year-old town that took its name from the capital of Switzerland, went on to invent Pepsi-Cola and lured new residents by its beauty — at the juncture of two picturesque rivers, the Neuse and the Trent.
When the storm made landfall early Friday morning, rainwater saturated New Bern from above, and coastal seawater overwhelmed it from the ground, surging up those rivers, flipping boats, stranding hundreds in their homes, and showing Carolinians both north and south what was coming next.