Good Morning.  Hurricane Irene remains a major hurricane this Thursday morning with 115mph sustained winds and gusts to 140mph.  Its expected to start to take on more of a north-northwest then northerly turn over the next day or 2, with a forecast track that moves over the Outer Banks of NC then hugs the mid-Atlantic coastline before crossing Long Island and CT on Sunday. 

Thursday 5am Update from National Hurricane Center

Hurricane Watches have been issued for the North Carolina area…. a watch means hurricane conditions are “possible” in the next 48hrs.  I expect additional Hurricane and Tropical Storm watches to be issued further north as we head into the end of the work week.

Our computer models overnight trended a bit west with the storm track… with nearly every model now showing a landfalling HURRICANE in New England on Sunday.  That means our area will likely be significantly impacted by this storm.  It’s a large storm (hurricane force winds extend outwards 70mi from the center of Irene) so even if the eye stays well west of our area, we would still see damaging winds, some heavy rain and dangerous storm surge.