Hurricane Earl Upgraded to Category Four

Updated: Wednesday, 01 Sep 2010, 3:01 PM MST
Published : Wednesday, 01 Sep 2010, 3:01 PM MST

(NewsCore) - Hurricane Earl was upgraded back to a Category Four storm Wednesday, as watches and warnings were extended northward through Massachusetts on the U.S. east coast.

Earl, packing maximum sustained winds of 135 miles per hour (215 kph), was located approximately 235 miles (380 kilometers) east of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and about 630 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The storm was moving northwest at 17 miles per hour.

Forecasters expected the core of the hurricane to approach North Carolina by late Thursday, bringing storm surges that could raise the water levels by as many as five feet above ground level and accumulations of up to six inches of rain.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue declared a state of emergency Wednesday in advance of Earl’s arrival. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has deployed teams to North Carolina to support storm preparations and has prepositioned supplies, including water, meals, tarps, blankets and generators, for rapid delivery.

A hurricane warning was in effect from North Carolina’s Bogue Inlet to the North Carolina-Virginia border, while a hurricane watch was issued for areas north of the North Carolina-Virginia border to Delaware’s Cape Henlopen. The watch was extended to include areas in Massachusetts from Woods Hole to Sagamore Beach, which includes the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

The National Hurricane Center extended its tropical storm watch to include areas from Sandy Hook, N.J. to Woods Hole, Mass. A tropical storm watch extends from north of Sagamore Beach to the mouth of the Merrimack River in northeast Massachusetts.

Keep your comments civil - MyFOXPhoenix.com reserves the right to remove comments that are obscene, profane, abusive, hateful, racist, spam, "trolling," or otherwise inappropriate. Repeat offenders will be banned. If you see such comments, report them to us by flagging them. (Click on 'Flag' beneath a post -- hover your mouse below the post's text for it to appear.)

Comments should be flagged for: spamming, violating our commenting policy, being clearly unrelated and attacking other commenters personally. Comments should not be flagged for: Disagreeing with the content or disputes with other commenters.

Be sure to refer to our Terms of Service.

Stay on topic: Don't discuss an entirely different subject or spam the section asking about another story. Send us an e-mail instead. Continue to spam comment sections and your acccount will be banned. Keep your posts brief and to the point. Remember this is a comment section, not your personal blog.

When posting a comment on myfoxphoenix.com, a valid e-mail address, Facebook, Yahoo!, OpenID or Twitter account is necessary. The e-mail is not available for viewers to see. You will be required to verify the e-mail address before posting a comment. Users with third party logins (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are already considered verified accounts.

Choose a user name you'll remember - don't use your real name unless you want it to be known.

Accounts that use obscenities in their user names and/or avatar pictures are not allowed.

To avoid your posts being labeled as spam, simply provide a link to an article instead of copying and pasting the entire text.

Posts with obscenities will be removed by moderators.

Click here if you need help signing up for an account or using your profile.

Comments Powered By Disqus

Live Video

FOX 10 News at 5 & 6

Hurricane Earl Upgraded to Category Four

Top Stories

Popular

Most Commented