Hurricane Earl moves closer to land, Rhode Island and Massachusetts could be impacted

The path of Hurricane Earl will be monitored by millions of people over the next forty eight hours as the category four hurricane poses tremendous danger to the east coast of the United States. North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland have all issued a state of emergency due to the close proximity that the hurricane is projected to follow. The initial projections have the hurricane traveling just along the outer banks of North Carolina. Residents in this area were order to evacuate on Wednesday evening no later than six pm in an effort to help minimize injuries. Property owners were encouraged to take precautionary steps to help secure their homes and business from potential high wind damage (boarding up windows, removing excess debris, putting furniture indoors).

The path of Earl has it flirting with the east coast for the next three days and the eye of the storm passing just to the east of Marthas Vineyard early Saturday morning. The storm has a potential to impact areas as far as 200 miles in each direction from its eye as it moves up the coastline, which is one of the main reasons why property owners, municipalities, and FEMA are all closely following the storms path, any slight movement could lead to a large amount of destruction in some of the highest populated communities in the United States. The projected path likely puts areas of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine as the highest probability of impact from the storm as it is projected to follow a snakelike pattern on the coast. The good news is that the storm is projected to weaken in size as it moves northward this week. Present wind speeds clocked as high as 140 miles per hour are likely to drop.

hurricane earl photo from National Hurricane Center

The Atlantic Hurricane season has hit its stride in the month of September as tropical storm Fionna is following in Earl’s path although projecting to go on a more eastern path. There are two additional tropical storm depressions in the Atlantic that have the potential of developing into Hurricanes over the next two weeks, keeping the National Hurricane Center on full alert and property owners from Maine to Texas glued to the weather channel for updated alerts on this years hurricane season. Jarvis has readied their national disaster response team to be on call in the event areas receive substantial damage from the potential storms this week and for the balance of the hurricane season.