North Carolina officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for visitors to be expanded to all of Dare County this morning and urged residents living along the ocean to relocate because waves are expected to wash over roads when Hurricane Earl passes by later tonight.
Currituck County has called for a mandatory evacuation of visitors on the Currituck Outer Banks. The area includes Corolla and the northern Outer Banks four-wheel drive area. The sale of alcohol has been suspended on the Currituck Outer Banks. Currituck County schools will be closed Friday.
At 11 a.m. today, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the Category 4 storm was packing winds of 140 mph and was located about 300 miles south of Cape Hatteras. It was moving north at about 18 mph. Conditions will deteriorate late today, and the storm’s worst effects should be felt as is passes by late tonight and early Friday morning.
The storm is expected to lose strength and could pass Hampton Roads as a weaker Category 3 hurricane. Its effects will be felt more severely on the Outer Banks, but Hampton Roads officials also are keeping careful track of the storm and expect some impact.
Winds of at least tropical storm force are expected to lash the Outer Banks late tonight and gust up to 74 mph, or hurricane force, said John Elardo, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Morehead City office. “It’s a large storm, too, so its effects are going to be felt for a while,” Elardo said this morning. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Storm surge of 3 to 5 feet is possible as waves 30 feet or higher crash onto the beaches and wash over some roads, Elardo said. Some breaches are possible in areas with weak sand dunes or no dunes at all. The storm’s rain bands also could dump 3 to 5 inches of rain.
Earl is expected to track 60 to 65 miles east of Cape Hatteras around midnight, according to the weather service. Winds likely will reach 25 mph in Hampton Roads with gusts up to 35 and 40 mph, said Andrew Zimmerman, a meteorologist in the weather service’s Wakefield office. Along the coast, gusts could be higher. Less than an inch of rain is expected by way of scattered showers with tidal flooding brought on by storm surge. Flooding will be minor to moderate.
“It’s going to be moving rather fast so, there will be no sustained onshore wind,” Zimmerman said. “That’s going to have somewhat of a limiting factor on the surge.”
High tides on Friday at Sewells Point are expected at 4:31 a.m. and 5:11 p.m. The trough moving toward us from the west, and expected to steer Earl away from the coast, should help sheer some of the upper-level winds, Zimmerman said.
Hurricane warnings remain for coastal North Carolina, with a hurricane watch from the Virginia border to Cape Henlopen, Del., according to the hurricane center. Other watches and warnings extend up the coast as far north as Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Nova Scotia, Canada.
Source : Insurance News Net
