Hurricane Earl Weakening, but Still Powerful… Hits Virginia Beach, Cape Cod Braces for First Hurricane in 19 Years (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 3, 2010
Hurricane Earl: Cape Cod is bracing itself for the first hurricane to hit there in 19 years
Hurricane Earl can still pack a wallop, but has weakened to no where near as destructive as weather experts and forecasters had feared yesterday. Weather services have downgraded it from Category 4 to Category 1, which is still dangerous.
Cape Cod, however, is bracing itself for the first hurricane to hit there in 19 years.
From Christian Science Monitor, Hurricane Earl update: storm surges up coast toward Cape Cod:
Hurricane Earl, down to 85 miles per hour and only a Category 1 storm, is accelerating toward the Massachusetts vacation destinations of Nantucket and Cape Cod.
But forecasters say most of the hurricane’s punch this evening will be over the open waters of the Atlantic, eliciting sighs of relief at places like Barnstable on Cape Cod and Montauk on the eastern end of Long Island.
The National Hurricane Center, in its 11 AM update, referred to Earl as a “large but weaker hurricane,” no longer the Category 4 monster with 145 mile-per-hour winds.
From FOX News, Cape Braces for Earl – First Hurricane in 19 Years:
Cape Codders are familiar with Nor’easters, nasty ocean storms that bring high winds and lashing rains, but its been 19 years since a hurricane hit the region. In 1991, Bob, a category 1, rolled across the Cape leaving extensive damage in his wake. Downed trees left thousands without power and hundreds of boats broke free from their moorings, piling up on beaches from Cotuit to Yarmouth.
Bob and Beth Bommhardt of Osterville remember Bob well and are taking no chances. They spent the morning moving lawn furniture and making sure their home is battened down. “My wife expects the worse! I don’t know – I think it’s going to blow through and not be that strong,” said John Bommhardt. Beth Bommhardt dug out old VHS footage of Hurricane Bob she shot from her front door almost twenty years ago. “The first thing that comes to my mind with a hurricane coming is we’re going to lose our power,” she said as she watched the old footage of trees swaying, the crack of snapping limbs clearly audible. “It doesn’t take much for us to lose our power here – and that is what I remember from the last one – we were six days without power with a six year old and a two year old.”
Hoping to avoid a similar situation this time Massachusetts officials were taking no chances. Governor Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency yesterday, and dozens of electrical workers in bucket trucks streamed onto the Cape, stationing themselves in centrally located Hyannis so they can respond to downed power lines.
Unlike seasoned storm veterans along the Gulf coast, few people on Cape Cod are boarding windows with plywood. With the storm shifting just slightly to the east the impact is expected to be significant but not as serious as a direct hit. Shelters were opened at high schools for those seeking protection from Earl, some pet friendly so man’s best friend could also bunk overnight. Barnstable High School in Hyannis had room for 500 people. Those who decide to evacuate to the mainland will probably need to do so by late afternoon as officials have said both bridges over the Cape Cod Canal will be closed if winds hit 70mph.
Usually Cape Cod is full of tourists for the Labor Day weekend but beaches in Barnstable were closed, cables strung across entrances and ‘no lifeguard on duty’ signs affixed to lifeguard stands. In Hyannis Harbor a ferry bringing people back from Nantucket emerged through the early afternoon fog, its horn sounding its arrival. The island is expected to take the brunt of the storm with Earl passing some 30 miles to the east and officials from the state run Steamship Authority said service will be halted as it approaches. The hurricane is projected to arrive at low tide and blow through in a matter of hours during the middle of the night, which is good news for those hoping to salvage the holiday weekend.
Elsewhere, Hurricane Earl brushed by Virginia Beach, bringing driving rain, lots of wind, and rough surf. But as shown in the video below, that didn’t deter residents from taking it all in along the boardwalk.
Associated Press: Hurricane Earl Slips By, VA Beach Draws a Crowd
From New York Times, Hurricane Weakens as It Hits the Coast:
NANTUCKET, Mass. — After whipping the North Carolina coastline with heavy wind and rain — but not with the power that nervous officials, residents and tourists had anticipated —Hurricane Earl weakened further on Friday as it churned north through the Atlantic, setting a course toward the seaside communities along Cape Cod.
Emergency officials in Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and other waterfront towns throughout eastern Massachusetts were still bracing for what the National Weather Service called a “large hurricane,” but at least some of Earl’s menace had diminished by midday Friday. Forecasters downgraded the storm, which is entering cooler waters, to a Category 1 hurricane from a Category 2, and lifted some tropical storm alerts for parts of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Long Island. The National Hurricane Center said the hurricane’s top sustained winds had slowed to 85 miles per hour as it lumbered through colder waters.
New York City, which had also braced for some of the storm’s lashing, was removed from a tropical storm watch, which means no heavy winds and at most rain. Suffolk County on Long Island remained under a warning and has already received heavy showers. With swells as high as 16 feet, swimming was being discouraged on parts of Long Island until Saturday afternoon.
From MSNBC, Labor Day travelers contend with Hurricane Earl:
Hurricane Earl’s whipping winds are adding a wrinkle to an already busy three-day weekend where more than 34 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home.
“We’re recommending that people prepare, plan early, call ahead to the airlines and look at alternate routes to get places,” AAA’s Nancy White said on the TODAY show.
John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports implemented a ground stop for arriving aircraft because of weather and wind, while La Guardia airport is experiencing ground delays of up to one hour, according to flight delay information on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website.
From Sydney Morning Herald, Hurricane Earl lashes US East Coast:
A weakened but still nasty Hurricane Earl is lashing the US East Coast with heavy winds and high surf, triggering warnings right up to Canada, after dealing a glancing blow to North Carolina.
Coastal residents who chose to stay behind had battened down after tens of thousands fled the strongest Atlantic storm of 2010.
An angry surf eroded beaches and caused sporadic power outages at the popular Carolina barrier island destinations of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, and storm surges flooded some roadways, but Earl otherwise failed to bring about disaster.
While major swells rolled along much of the US eastern seaboard, millions of people in communities from Virginia up to Maine braced for the storm, although the National Hurricane Center said winds had weakened to near 140km/h as the storm lost some steam churning northward over cooler waters.
Earl was now a category one hurricane, the lowest level on the NHC’s five-category Saffir-Simpson scale, although it was still several hundred km across.
“Earl is expected to remain a large hurricane as it approaches southeastern New England,” the NHC cautioned in a bulletin on Friday.
Weather watchers had said Earl was the most powerful hurricane to threaten the US Northeast and New England since 1991, when Hurricane Bob killed six people.
As the storm began to track to the northeast, with Earl’s outer bands of rain hitting New York’s Long Island, Carolinians who had feared a major storm surge and potentially deadly flooding were heaving a sigh of relief, with minimal damage reported.
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