Hurricane Arthur slammed the North Carolina coast early yesterday and weakened as it moved out to sea, causing no deaths or injuries but spoiling the Independence Day holiday for thousands of Americans.
Arthur, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, struck land at the southern end of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
It rattled vacation homes, flooded roads and cut off island communities from the mainland.
Top sustained winds of 160 km per hour earned Arthur a Category 2 status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. It weakened to a Category 1 as it moved northeast into the Atlantic Ocean with 145-kph top sustained winds.
“This has been a very good day. There have been no casualties or serious injuries reported,” North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said at a news conference in Raleigh.
Hurricane caused no deaths but spoilt Independence Day holiday
He said there was minimal damage on the North Carolina coast. About 44,000 people were without power, with outages reported on Ocracoke Island and the Morehead City area.
North Carolina’s beaches were open, McCrory said. Thousands of Independence Day beachgoers had been ordered off the low-lying islands ahead of the storm or had left voluntarily, as the storm disrupted July Fourth festivities and fireworks.
Todd Kimberlain, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Centre, said the storm would lose force as it moved northeast into colder waters. “It’s going to weaken here, and it is already,” he said.
Arthur is expected to pass near or over the Canadian province of Nova Scotia early today.
Kathleen O’Neal, owner of Island Artworks on Ocracoke Island, said she could feel her house lift up as the storm passed overhead.
“It was very bad here,” she said, adding that many trees had been knocked down and part of a neighbour’s roof had been pulled off. Residents began clearing downed trees with chain saws at about 6.30am. Thousands of tourists were wandering around looking at damage, she said.
On Hatteras Island, Paul Jones, a retired Maryland state police helicopter pilot, said Arthur’s winds had shaken his house until pictures fell off the walls.
“My wind metre was destroyed, ... it stopped at 85 [mph] somewhere around 2 o’clock in the morning,” he added.
Emergency management officials in Dare County, which includes Cape Hatteras, said there was some flooding and scattered power outages. McCrory said Highway 12, the 80-km road connecting Hatteras Island to the mainland, had been flooded and covered with sand in some areas.