HURRICANE EARL: Grateful for lack of intensity

John Smith had a few buddies over on Thursday night and was planning to party until Hurricane Earl cut the lights out, but the New Bern resident said he ended up having a “disorganized rain cloud” party instead.

Smith said he even had a small boat readied so he could paddle through the city’s streets if they were flooded Friday morning as they have in hurricanes past, but he said he woke up to find that the winds had only scattered a few leaves on the ground.

“I’ve seen a real hurricane,” Smith said. “(This) was just a wet, disorganized rain cloud that was over us. But what can you expect from a hurricane named Earl?”

Robert Frederick, meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Newport, said the New Bern area saw less than an inch of rain, and had no reports of a storm surge greater than 2 feet. There were reports of a 3-foot storm surge near the Cherry Branch ferry, and a 2½-foot surge near Harlowe.

The peak wind gust in the area was recorded at 30 mph by an automated observer system at the Coastal Carolina Regional Airport, Frederick said.

“New Bern fared pretty well, obviously, because the storm stayed offshore,” he said. “A 50 to a 100 mile change in the track further west would have been significantly different, but the storm stayed along or east of the track we were expecting.”

At its closest approach, Frederick said the storm came within about 100 miles of Cape Hatteras between 2 and 3 a.m. Friday. The most significant impacts were felt along the Outer Banks north of Ocracoke, he said. The service recorded an 82 mph gust at Oregon Inlet early Friday and later in the morning there were 70 mph gusts recorded at Manteo.

The National Hurricane Center reported Friday that the storm had reduced to a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph as it headed north-northeast away from the N.C. coast.

“The Outer Banks definitely got the worst of it,” Frederick said.

Stanley Kite, Craven County’s director of emergency services, said Friday there were no reports of hurricane damage in the county. He said he was pleased that traffic was light on the highways Thursday evening when the area was expected to start seeing effects of the storm.

“We had very little as far as 911 calls,” Kite added. “It wasn’t like people were out there trying to create havoc. We’d like to think they were making their personal plans and the majority of people made the decision to shelter in-place.”

Dan Oliver, community relations manager for Progress Energy Carolinas, said there were two power outages reported in Craven County, 23 in Pamlico, and none reported in Jones County.

“We brought in a couple of extra tree crews, and construction crews, and had them prepared if we needed,” Oliver said. “Fortunately, it didn’t turn out that we needed any of that.”

County emergency management officials had declared a state of emergency in the county on Thursday and asked for voluntary evacuations from people living in unsafe buildings or in areas subject to potential flooding.

There were four shelters opened in Craven County and in total, Kite said 63 people took shelter in them, with the largest number of people gathered at Havelock High School.

As many as 397 evacuees went to shelters across the coast at the peak of the storm, according to a news release from the N.C. Division of Emergency Management.

“Hurricane Earl was a very dangerous hurricane, and had the potential, just by the nature of hurricanes and how they behave, it could have made an erratic move and the damage could have been a very devastating here in short time window for people to respond,” Kite said. “But I’m glad that didn’t happen.”

Bill Wheeler also reported there was no damage around where he lives in Craven County across the Neuse River from New Bern.

“I told my wife, if the power goes out, wake me up and I’ll start the generator,’” Wheeler said, adding that he believes the power did not go out. “I guess not — I didn’t get woken up.”

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.