Just ahead of the Labor Day rush, Hurricane Earl appears to be planning a visit along the North Carolina coast, and forecasters worry the storm could pack as much punch as Isabel in 2003.
"It's a real problematic storm," said Jeff Orrock, warning coordinator for the National Weather Service in Raleigh. "It needs to be taken pretty seriously."
The storm formed Sunday and fattened up quickly as it crossed the Atlantic, with sustained winds of up to 135 mph Monday, making it a Category 4 hurricane. It battered the islands of the northeastern Carib bean on Monday afternoon.
Projected paths have Earl menacing the Outer Banks by Thursday night or Friday morning. Whether it causes rip currents and severe beach erosion, or inland flooding and wind damage, depends on where it is when it turns to the northeast.
Orrock said that each time an NOAA hurricane hunter plane flew into the storm Monday it got readings of lower pressure and higher wind velocity than the time before. Each new set of computer models had the storm coming a little farther toward land before turning north and east, meaning it could make landfall.
Orrock suggested that property owners along the coast consider making preparations - covering windows, stowing outdoor furniture, securing boats or pulling them out of the water - today and Wednesday.
"We're not going to know if this storm is going to make a turn until Thursday, and then it's going to be too late," Orrock said. "We're going to be staring down a major hurricane come Wednesday hoping it's going to turn on Thursday, and it's going to be here Thursday night."
Right behind Earl, Tropical Storm Fiona formed in the Atlantic east of the Leeward Islands on Monday. It had winds of 40 mph.
Ernie Seneca, spokesman for N.C. Crime Control and Public Safety, said coastal residents should refresh their emergency supplies. State officials are doing the same, he said, so that if needed, generators, water and other items can be sent quickly to areas that need them.
Progress Energy, which has thousands of customers from Morehead City to Wilmington, is watching the storm too, company spokesman Jeff Brooks said. Increasingly sophisticated forecasting tools make it easier to predict not only where a storm will go, Brooks said, but what kind of damage it will do.
"We want our resources to be in place before a storm, if possible," Brooks said, "not only for the customers but for the safety of our employees."
For Ervin Bateman, who lives at the coast, Monday was too early to start worrying. Bateman owns Sugar Creek Seafood Restaurant on the Roanoke Sound in Nags Head, and is a Kitty Hawk town commissioner.
"It's a way of life on the coast," Bateman said of the occasional hurricane. "You listen to what they say, you take precautions, and you hope for the best."
Bateman was there in September 2003 when Isabel came through, dumping three feet of water into his first-floor office. Though Isabel was a Category 2 storm by the time it made landfall, it caused $450 million in damage in North Carolina alone. In Dare County, it damaged thousands of homes and sliced a new inlet through Hatteras Island, leaving the village of Hatteras isolated by road for weeks.
"I'm an optimist," Bateman said. Even with Isabel, his restaurant was open again in three days.
