Hurricane Ophelia edged toward North Carolina early on Wednesday, but many in the storm’s path shrugged at the threat of flooding rain and wind even as officials urged them to evacuate.
The National Hurricane Centre upgraded the storm’s status from a tropical storm to a category-one hurricane on Tuesday, saying maximum sustained winds had reached 121kph, with higher gusts.
Further strengthening was possible.
Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which made a head-on charge at the Gulf of Mexico coastal area two weeks ago, Ophelia has meandered since forming off the Florida coast last week. That makes landfall predictions difficult — and makes it harder for some to take the storm seriously.
”We’re just having a grand time,” said Diane Komorowski, a tourist from Philadelphia, as she walked through the choppy surf on the Outer Banks with her husband.
”They keep saying, ‘It’s coming,’ — yet every day, it’s great here,” she said.
Still, others were taking caution.
At Wrightsville beach, the Scotchman convenience store opened for business early on Wednesday, although the windows were boarded up.
”The company told me to keep the store open as long as I could because the people are going to need supplies,” store manager Dennis Uncapher said.
At 9am GMT, Ophelia was centred about 115km south of Wilmington and about 200km east-northeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and was moving north at 8kph. The storm’s effects were already being felt as heavy rains fell on the coast near the border of the Carolinas.
A hurricane warning extended about 440km from the South Santee River in South Carolina to Oregon Inlet at Pamlico Sound in North Carolina.
Early on Wednesday, a bridge in North Carolina’s New Hanover county was closed because of wind with gusts more than 64kph.
County spokesperson David Paynter said the latest forecasts suggested that hurricane-force winds would only scrape the county’s coast because the centre of the storm would pass 50km to 65km offshore.
The storm was moving slowly, so heavy rain could linger over land and cause serious flooding. The hurricane centre said up to 38cm of rain was possible in eastern North Carolina.
State and local officials, determined not to be caught off-guard after Katrina, blanketed the coast with a mix of voluntary and mandatory evacuations, closing schools and opening shelters. Nearly 100 people had checked into a shelter in an elementary school near downtown Wilmington on Tuesday night.
Along the exposed Outer Banks, all residents and visitors were ordered to evacuate Hatteras Island on Tuesday. Visitors were also ordered off Ocracoke Island and the National Park Service closed the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.
A surfer was missing along the South Carolina coast, with the search suspended because of rough seas.
North Carolina Governor Mike Easley said coastal residents should be prepared to go without power for two to three days.
”The beaches we expect to take a real beating,” Easley said. ”The bottom line is we’re definitely going to get flooding, not just on the coast, but also in low-lying areas as the rivers swell from the storm surge itself.”
Ophelia is the 15th named storm and seventh hurricane in this year’s busy Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1 and ends on November 30. — Sapa-AP