Ophelia Rakes Southeast NC
UPDATE: I am surprised to see it, but this live weather cam at Atlantic Beach, NC, is still up and running. We'll see how long this one at Kill Devil Hills, a little further to the northeast, lasts. There are a few wave and damage pictures available already at this surf website.
What a day, I can't even take time to breathe. Lots of information coming out about the storm. There are a number of great links on the front page of AccuWeather.com to help you keep up-to-date on the storm, and we have live video coverage from our wacky crew in Morehead City.
Hurricane Ophelia, now at 85 mph sustained winds, is raking the southeast coast of North Carolina. A list of mandatory evacuations, including my vacation spot, Oak Island, is available on WECT's website.
Brett Anderson, a veteran meteorologists at AccuWeather, has family living in Southport, North Carolina, not far from my vacation spot. They have reported 7 inches of rain at 11 a.m., flooding trees down. My cousin who lives in north Wilmington sent the photo below this morning, showing a lot of branches down in her area.
70,000 customers were without power as of 11 am according to the Wilmington Star. The Star also has detailed local information and a few photos from readers.
The storm has caused a malfunction at the government's Wilmington observation site, which has been reporting "snow and a broken freezing rain sensor" along with no temperature or humidity data, since late this morning.
As far as winds... the NWS says that Wrightsville Beach reported 68 mph sustained, gusts to 77 mph... Buoy 41013 reported sustained 59, gusting to 78 mph after the eye passed over (note in this graph that the pressure fall, then calm winds, then winds and pressure rise again). Buoy 41035 is in the eye right now, quoting pressure at 29.30" and winds gusting to 63 mph. The NWS says that Bald Head Island also reported hurricane-force gusts (since hurricanes are measured by sustained winds, "hurricane-force gust" is a questionable phrase).
Rainfall has been tremendous because of the storm's slow speed. Last night, over 15 inches had fallen offshore. That count was reset the middle of the night and now over 15 inches has fallen on land (see Doppler estimated precipitation map from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus below).
As we zoom out on that precip-estimate map, you can see the spiral rings created by the heavy eyewall storms as the storm rotates:
The government's National Weather Service says that waves as high as 18 feet are hammering waters from Cape Fear north, and they could increase to 25 feet this afternoon. As far as measured waves, we haven't beat Buoy 41002's claim of 23 foot waves on Sunday.
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