Axios

The White House approved an emergency declaration for North Carolina after massive storm Ian, which hit Cuba, Puerto Rico, Florida and South Carolina earlier this week, ripped through the state late Friday and early Saturday.

The latest: Ian was downgraded and is expected to continue weakening near Virginia and North Carolina's border, per the NHC.

Follow live news updates on Tropical Storm Ian as it makes landfall again in South Carolina.

Ian regained hurricane status Thursday evening on its way to a damaging encounter with the Carolinas after bringing record storm surge flooding and intense winds to Florida's west coast, the National Hurricane Center said.

The big picture: Hurricane warnings have been issued for the South Carolina coastline. The storm has knocked out power to about 2.6 million customers across Florida, with outages mounting in the Jacksonville area as the storm's winds knock down trees and power lines.

Recovery efforts are underway in Florida in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Ian, which continued to move northeast as a tropical storm across the state Thursday on its way to the Carolinas.

Driving the news: More than 2.6 million in the state were without power Thursday after Ian brought strong winds, "life-threatening, catastrophic" flooding, and storm surges as high as 12 feet in some areas.

NASA on Thursday shared the first images captured by the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes of a spacecraft slamming into an asteroid in a first-of-its-kind experiment earlier this week.

Why it matters: NASA's undertaking — called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — marked the first time humans have changed the course of a celestial body and was a major milestone in the space agency's planetary defense mission.

Follow live news updates on Tropical Storm Ian as it heads toward Georgia and the Carolinas.

Hurricane Ian weakened to a tropical storm early Thursday, but the National Hurricane Center warned it's still battering the Florida Peninsula with strong winds, heavy rains and storm surge.

Driving the news: Since making landfall as a high-end Category 4 storm Wednesday afternoon, Ian has knocked out power to nearly 2.5 million people as it inundated densely populated coastal communities known for attracting tourists and retirees — including Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples and Sanibel Island.

Hurricane forecasters' worst nightmare came true on Wednesday morning, when what had been a Category 3 storm Tuesday night suddenly jumped almost to Category 5.

Why it matters: It used to be rare for storms to keep strengthening until landfall, let alone do so rapidly. Now it is not — and studies show this is a dangerous sign of climate change.

Hurricane Ian was pummeling communities across the Florida Peninsula on Thursday morning, a day after making landfall as a major Category 4 storm.

The big picture: Ian weakened to a Category 1 storm overnight, but it was still posing a serious threat with its heavy rains, powerful winds, storm surge and life-threatening flooding as it churned toward Georgia and South Carolina, knocking out power to over 2 million Floridians in its wake.

Hurricane Ian was flooding some areas of Florida's west coast with storm surges that could reach up to 18 feet above ground level as it moved across the peninsula after making landfall Wednesday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said.

Why it matters: Surge numbers that high — 12 to 18 ft — would be unprecedented for the region and some of the highest on record in the U.S.

Much attention has focused on Hurricane Ian's storm surge flooding coastal areas of Florida, setting records in coastal areas like Fort Myers and Naples.

• But the National Hurricane Center warned in an advisory Wednesday that "widespread, life-threatening catastrophic flash and urban flooding, with major to record flooding along rivers, is expected to continue across central Florida" — damage that will last after the storm moves away.