Landfall expected Saturday in Nova Scotia.
BUXTON, N.C. (AP) -- Hurricane Earl churned past the North Carolina Outer Banks and its powerful gusts and driving rains were starting to be felt in southeastern Virginia early Friday, the beginning of at least 24 hours of stormy, windy weather along the East Coast.
Residents and officials of North Carolina's barrier islands were waiting for daybreak to see how much damage the storm's winds and waves had left behind. But National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Collins said Earl had produced little storm surge and only minor flooding in some coastal counties. Predictions of storm surges between 2 and 4 feet may be too much, he said.
Earl had weakened all day Thursday, winding down from a Category 4 storm with winds of 140 mph to a Category 2 storm with winds of 105 mph. But it still packed enough of a punch to send rain sideways and shake signs in Buxton, the southeasternmost tip of the Outer Banks. And the National Hurricane Center expected Earl to remain a large hurricane as it approached southeastern New England.
A tropical storm warning was issued early Friday for the coast of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in Canada.
In Nags Heads, with the eye the closest it was expected to get to the North Carolina coast, the rain lashed against window panes and the wind kicked up. At about 2 a.m., the tops of small trees were bending in the howling gusts and beach grass was whipping back and forth on dunes leading to the ocean. A couple hundred power outages were reported.
While more than 30,000 residents and visitors were ordered to leave the Outer Banks, more hardy residents gassed up their generators and hunkered at home behind their boarded-up windows, even though officials warned them that it could be three days before they could expect any help.
"It's kind of nerve-racking, but I've been through this before," said 65-year-old Herma De Gier, who has lived in the village of Avon since 1984. De Gier said she will ride out the storm at a neighbor's house but wants to be close enough to her own property so she can quickly deal with any damage.
The eye of the hurricane was expected to get only about 100 miles east of the Outer Banks, not any closer, said Collins.
During its march up the Atlantic, it could snarl travelers' Labor Day weekend plans with several flights already canceled. Forecasters said that a kink in the jetstream over the eastern U.S. should push the storm away from the coast, guiding it like a marble in a groove. Earl is expected to move north-northeast for much of Friday, staying away from New Jersey and the other mid-Atlantic states, but also passing very close to Long Island, Cape Cod and Nantucket, which could get gusts up to 100 mph.
The most likely place Earl will make landfall is on Saturday in western Nova Scotia, Canada, where it could still be a hurricane, said hurricane center deputy director Ed Rappaport.