Earl Loses Steam as It Heads Up East Coast

(Sept. 3) -- A weakened but still potent Tropical Storm Earl will sweep past eastern New England tonight, bringing heavy rains, strong winds and big waves. The fast-moving storm caused less damage than expected along coastal stretches.

Earl is packing 70-mph winds and is still considered a large tropical storm, and it is expected to continue weakening, the National Hurricane Center said today in its 11 p.m. EDT advisory.

President Barack Obama declared a pre-emptive state of emergency in Massachusetts earlier today, and tropical storm and hurricane advisories remain in effect from eastern Massachusetts to Nova Scotia. Earl is set to move past southeastern New England tonight.

Earl will track close to the Massachusetts islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. Airlines canceled many flights in New England and Amtrak canceled train service between New York and Boston.

"The message today is, stay off the roads," Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said at a news conference this afternoon. "The day isn't over, but it looks like we dodged this one."

Buoys bobbing offshore from North Carolina's Outer Banks, where the storm passed within 85 miles this morning, recorded waves as high as 35 feet, Reuters reported. And while most beach-goers have fled for higher ground, those swells were sending enthusiastic surfers to the seaside up and down the East Coast.


"It's going to be 22-foot" on shore, 21-year-old Brad Cebula, one of about 100 surfers bracing waves in eastern Long Island, told the New York Daily News. "Surfing that kind of wave, you either know what you're doing or you're going to drown."

Nearby at Gurney's Inn, an 84-year-old hotel on Long Island's Montauk waterfront, the hotel manager said he was fielding calls from guests canceling because of the storm, but he also had calls inquiring about vacancies by people eager to get a view of the storm's power.

"Mother Nature puts on quite a show when you have events like this passing by, and you get a front-row seat at Gurney's," manager Paul Monte told The New York Times.

Farther south in Ocean City, Md., authorities have said no one is allowed in the water except for experienced surfers with proper equipment. That's because the ocean "is sometimes dangerous, even up to your knees," Joseph Theobald, the town's emergency services director, told The Washington Post.

Even as far south as Florida, well south of Earl, beaches along Brevard County's so-called Space Coast are flying two red flags, signifying that the surf is too powerful for regular swimmers. Lifeguards had to rescue eight people from the county's Atlantic beaches Thursday, ocean rescue chief Jeff Scabarozi told the Florida Today newspaper. One of those rescued was a surfer whose board snapped away from its ankle leash, he said.

"There were Hawaiian-style waves," 40-year-old Robert Fuentes told the paper. "The last time I saw this, I had to travel to Nicaragua. But it's not for the inexperienced surfer."

Tens of thousands of vacationers have been forced to scrap beach plans for the big Labor Day weekend, abandoning holiday rentals in North Carolina and planning to spend the weekend indoors and inland instead. But one Ohio couple who'd spent a year planning their perfect seaside wedding refused to abandon their plans.

Lancelot Seman and Denise Boyd had planned to wed this weekend, but they rushed to beat Earl and ended up tying the knot on the beach in Nags Head, N.C., on Thursday, just as the hurricane's waves were rolling ashore.

"We didn't know if the beach would even be here tomorrow, so we figured we better take care of this right now," Seman, a 32-year-old U.S. Army supply sergeant, told The Wall Street Journal.

While they exchanged vows, a lifeguard drove up and down the beach in a four-wheeler with a sign reading "No Swimming." And about an hour after the ceremony, huge waves were crashing over the beach and eroding sand where they'd been standing.