Hurricane Earl expected to weaken as it moves toward Maritimes
Posted September 3, 2010 11:56 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HALIFAX, N.S. – As fishermen tied up their boats and farmers fretted over their orchards, forecasters tracking the movement of Hurricane Earl said it’s looking more likely that the swirling storm will touch down in western Nova Scotia on Saturday.
John Parker, a meteorologist with the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said while Earl’s track is becoming clearer, southern New Brunswick hasn’t been entirely ruled out as a point of contact.
“It is tightening up on the uncertainty so we’re looking at Saturday morning, moving up over western Nova Scotia — Digby, Yarmouth counties most likely,” Parker said Friday.
Earl, now a Category 2 storm tracking east of Cape Hatteras, N.C., is expected to speed up as it makes its Maritime entrance as a weakened Category 1, meaning it would be packing winds between 119 and 152 kilometres per hour.
The hurricane centre said Earl’s maximum sustained winds are about 167 kilometres per hour. Parker said the storm is moving north-northeast at about 30 kilometres per hour.
He said the hurricane is expected to be offshore Saturday around 9 a.m., before tracking across the Maritimes and approaching Prince Edward Island around 3 p.m., give or take about six hours.
As Earl churned toward the Maritimes on Friday, tropical storm watches were extended to Cape Breton and Iles-de-la-Madeleine.
Hurricane watches are also in effect across southwestern and parts of central Nova Scotia.
Other areas of mainland Nova Scotia are either under tropical storm watches or warnings. All of Prince Edward Island is also under a tropical storm warning.
In southeastern New Brunswick, rainfall warnings and tropical storm watches are in effect.
Environment Canada said it is likely that portions of southwestern Nova Scotia will have wind gusts as high as 130 kilometres per hour.
Elsewhere along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, as far as the eastern shore and the Bay of Fundy, maximum wind gusts will likely reach 90 kilometres per hour. The same is being forecast for portions of P.E.I. and New Brunswick.
“Later today we will determine where hurricane warnings will be placed if required,” the hurricane centre, based in the Halifax suburb of Dartmouth, said in a statement.
“If hurricane warnings are issued, then our forecast wind gusts will be around 130 kilometres per hour for the affected regions.”
Between 40 and 70 millimetres of rain will likely fall on Saturday, with southern and central New Brunswick and northwestern P.E.I. expected to receive the most.
Despite the fact that Earl has weakened to a Category 2 hurricane, the centre said “an abnormally hot and humid” air mass hanging over the Maritimes would allow the storm to maintain its tropical characteristics.
