Earl Downgraded to Category 2 as Vacation Disruption Continues

(Sept. 2) -- Hurricane Earl lost some steam today as it headed for the Eastern Seaboard, with winds slackening to a still-dangerous 110 mph, as tens of thousands of vacationers scrapped Labor Day beach plans on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The National Hurricane Center downgraded Earl earlier today to a Category 2 hurricane. As for 8 p.m. EDT, Earl was about 160 miles south of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and moving north at 18 mph.

Even as a Category 2, Earl still poses a massive threat to communities on the East Coast, with life, property and at least one beachside wedding all in jeopardy.

Hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings are in effect from North Carolina to Maine and parts of Atlantic Canada, including islands off Massachusetts, where Brian Ahearn and his fiancee are due to wed Saturday, followed by a reception aboard a yacht touring Boston Harbor.

"Boston hasn't had a hurricane in some time, so we don't know what to expect,'' the 31-year-old Ahearn told The Boston Globe. "We have all these contingency plans," he said, adding that he's downloaded all sorts of weather applications to nervously track Earl on his smart phone.

The hurricane is expected to sweep over the Outer Banks with hurricane-force winds late tonight. Then it's due to reach near or offshore coastal areas of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia on Friday and approach southeastern New England on Friday night, the advisory said.

"Everyone is poised and ready to pull the trigger if Earl turns west, but our hope is that this thing goes out to sea and we're all golfing this weekend," Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, told The Associated Press.

Some 30,000 tourists have already evacuated North Carolina's Hatteras Island, along with 800 year-round residents, even amid sunny skies and only a hint of gusty winds -- the fabled calm before the storm.

"We're bummed," Pennsylvania resident Tina Riviello told The Washington Post by telephone while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, after evacuating a Hatteras house she had rented for the week. "The hardest part about leaving is it's sunny and beautiful. It's hard to believe a hurricane is coming."

The North Carolina National Guard has deployed 80 troops to assist in orderly evacuations, and President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency there ahead of the storm's landfall, the AP reported.

"This is a day of action," said Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's administrator, according to USA Today. "Sunny skies in the Outer Banks will deteriorate throughout the afternoon. For people further north, conditions will deteriorate very quickly."

Farther north, the sun was still shining in the Philadelphia area and at nearby beaches along the New Jersey shore, but larger-than-normal waves have limited swimmers to wading only waist-deep, and swimming is banned through Saturday at the Island Beach State Park, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. On its way through the Caribbean earlier this week, Earl generated waves 50 feet tall, causing an estimated $150 million in damage.

Some establishments responded to the oncoming storm with dark humor. One motel on Hatteras posted the message "Sorry Earl, No Vacancy" on its sign, The Washington Post reported. Another took a more direct approach, saying, "Go Away, Earl."

While many vacationers are begrudgingly abandoning their holiday rentals, a small number are actually enthusiastic about the storm and its huge waves: surfers.

"I wasn't supposed to get down here until Friday," 18-year-old surfer Jules Castellini, at New Jersey's Ocean City, told the Inquirer. "But I got a call that the waves are really getting good and that I should get down here. It's too good to wait."