Visitors were taking ferries off Ocracoke Island and told to leave neighboring Cape Hatteras in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and federal authorities have warned people all along the Eastern seaboard to be prepared to evacuate. Emergency officials as far north as Maine were checking their equipment and urging people to have disaster plans and supplies ready.
Earl was still more than 700 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, with top sustained winds of 125 mph. It was on track to near the North Carolina shore late Thursday or early Friday and then blow north off the coast, with forecasters cautioning that it was still too early to tell how close the storm may come to land.
Hurricane watches were out from Surf City, N.C., to Virginia’s Parramore Island. Not since Hurricane Bob in 1991 has such a powerful storm had such a large swath of the East Coast in its sights, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.
“A slight shift of that track to the west is going to impact a great deal of real estate with potential hurricane-force winds,” Feltgen said.
Tourists quit NC islands as Earl nears East Coast - Yahoo! News
I feel terrible for the lost income over Labor Day, especially as Ocracoke and Hatteras are near and dear to my heart. Ocracoke is part of the NC Lingual Heritage project, which documents the vast swaths of accents you can hear in the Old North State - more than anywhere else in this country. The way the geography of NC is, mountains, estuaries, and island waters kept groups so distinct for so long that you can actually still hear a brogue on Ocracoke - an honest to God brogue - because it’s basically still entirely Scotch Irish. That’s the fascinating thing about NC, it’s not like NYC where you witness about a billion different accents because everyone’s from all over. In NC, it’s largely just variations on the original Scotch that came down - and the protestant Scotch Irish who were escaping religious persecution brought with them Highlands Scottish, Gaelic, Leitrim Irish, the lot. It’s kind of fascinating if you’re a geek like me, and either way, this hurricane is scary business.
