Hurricane Earl Will be No Isabel For Outer Banks
UPDATE: Meteorologist on CNN (I think it was Rob Marciano) just said on-air that the island will be cut into two pieces by Hurricane Earl. I guess we'll see who's right!
In 2003, Category 2 Hurricane Isabel hit the Outer Banks in North Carolina with such force that it split one of the long islands in two, as shown by the NASA image below. Comparisons between that storm and the approaching Hurricane Earl are now being made.
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While it's impossible to tell what the final effects of Earl will be on the Outer Banks, if the forecast track is correct, it's extremely unlikely anything that catastrophic would happen, in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong. The Outer Banks should be prepared for high waves, overwash on Highway 12, possibly damage to that road, damage to oceanfront homes, high winds and power outages. And most areas there probably should evacuate. But I don't think this is a situation where the island gets cut in half. That happened at the arrow on the map above, which shows Isabel's track in red. The strongest onshore winds and surge are northeast of the center of the storm, so it couldn't have hit at a worse place than that extremely thin strip of island.
In the case of Earl (11 AM tracks from AccuWeather shown in thin dark red, government in yellow), although stronger (if he passes by as a Cat 3) the storm will be far enough offshore that much of the storm surge and winds will not affect land -- unless the forecast swings pretty far west.
In any case you can bet the East Coast webcams, specifically the one at Rodanthe, NC, live shot shown below, will get pretty interesting tomorrow.
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