Hurricane Isabel Slams Into Mid-Atlantic Coast

At mid-day Thursday, a hurricane warning was in effect from southern North Carolina to the Virginia-Maryland border. A tropical storm warning extended northward to New York’s Long Island, including parts of New York City.

“Out the window we’re seeing trees blowing like crazy and quite a bit of rain coming down,” Carteret County Manager Mary Ann Hinshaw told Reuters from Beaufort on the North Carolina coast. “We’re starting to get reports of water coming up in low-lying areas.”

The National Hurricane Center reported at 11 a.m. EDT that the eye of the storm was coming ashore in North Carolina and that the eyewall of the hurricane, where the strongest winds are located, would hit the southern part of the Outer Banks as the storm moves in over land.

“Isabel has a very large eye … and winds within the eye will diminish … before increasing rapidly as the back edge of the eye passes by,” the weather service advised.

Hurricane Isabel’s top sustained wind had been clocked at 100 mph as it approached the East Coast, making it a Category 2 storm based on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale that rates a storm’s winds and destructive power. At its peak, Isabel ranked as the most destructive Category 5 with sustained winds at 160 mph.

“Typically, with a storm Category 2, you’ll have some trees blown down, you’ll have roofing damage, you’ll have some wind or door damage. We’re really concerned with the storm surge flooding,” Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the NewsHour on Wednesday.

“We’re forecasting 7 to 11 feet of storm surge near and to the north of where the center crosses the coast, and actually, we’re even forecasting 4 to 8 feet of storm surge up to Chesapeake. So they have not had a hurricane coming in perpendicular to the coastline like this in a long, long time,” Mayfield said.

Wind gusts around North Carolina’s Outer Banks were reported near 85 mph, according to the national hurricane center’s latest advisory.

More than 507,000 customers had lost power by late morning in southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, including parts of Raleigh, according to Dominion Virginia Power and other power companies.

An estimated 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate from low-lying areas of North Carolina and Virginia due to concerns about flooding from storm surges that could top 11 feet.

Despite repeated calls for all those directly in Isabel’s path to evacuate, some long-time residents and storm watchers chose to stay put, prompting Virginia Beach police to suggest they write their names on their forearms so they can be identified if they are injured or killed.

At Howard’s Pub on the Outer Banks’ small Ocracoke Island, bartender and 13-year resident James Tucker told the AP he and five other employees resolved early Thursday to “hang out and drink beer until the cable runs out.”

Most cities in the storm’s path, including the nation’s capital, essentially shut down ahead of the hurricane’s approach. The governors of West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Delaware had all declared states of emergency.

The federal government closed down Thursday as did school systems in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. The District’s public transportation system made the unusual decision to completely shut down at 11 a.m. EDT in advance of the storm.

President Bush left for the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland Wednesday evening, a day earlier than initially planned, to beat the storm.

A day of talks with King Abdullah II of Jordan was quickly rearranged for Camp David on Thursday. The president told a joint news conference with Abdullah that, “We’ll have a nice lunch and then we’ll batten down the hatches and spend a good evening with our friend.”