Satellite image of Hurricane Floyd on September 14, 1999. Floyd was a large and intense Cape Verdean hurricane that pounded the central and northern islands of the Bahamas, seriously threatened Florida, struck the coast of North Carolina, and then moved up the east coast of the United States into New England. it neared the threshold of Category 5 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale as approached the Bahamas, and produced a flood disaster of immense proportions in the eastern United States, particularly in North Carolina, where it killed 52 people