Facebook Safety Check activated for Hurricane Matthew: Let your friends know you're safe

Hurricane Matthew is surging through Florida's east coast with destructive flooding and wind gusts that the Weather Channel has called "potentially deadly." 

The Category 3 hurricane — weakened from a Category 4 early Friday — prompted Florida's governor to urge 1.5 million people to evacuate along the south Atlantic coast areas on Thursday, and Facebook has just activated its safety check feature for its users in Florida. 

If you are in the storm's affected area, you can use the feature to let your friends know that you are either safe or not in the area. The status will be pushed out immediately to all of your friends on the platform. 

If you mark yourself as safe, a push notification will be sent out to all of your Facebook friends to notify them of your status. Click here to activate it. 

The feature also lets you get a cursory overview of any of your Facebook friends who live in the area (or at least marked that they do on their Facebook profile), and whether or not they are safe or have yet to broadcast their status. 

Facebook has rolled out Safety Check in the past as a way for its users to put their social circles at ease in the face of tragic circumstances. It was activated for the first time after the Paris attacks and has been subsequently used for other major attacks and natural disasters.