Hurricane Earl makes a muted arrival in the northeast

By JOSEPH BERGER

c.2010 New York Times News Service

Despite the air of nobility that clings to the name, Earl arrived on the East Coast on Friday as little more than a routine storm with heavy downpours and blowhard winds — nothing like the full-throated hurricane that was feared.

That it did not produce typhoon-size clout did not mean that Earl had no impact. In Kill Devil Hills, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it flooded the streets enough to allow Kellie Maier to paddle her kayak among the cars. It shut beaches in East Hampton on Long Island, where officials blocked access with yellow ropes and ominous black and orange signs warning “No swimming.”

It played havoc with Labor Day travel, prompting a suspension of Amtrak train service between New York and Boston until Saturday morning and leading Continental Airlines to cancel 60 flights alone. It shut boat harbors and the airport in Nantucket, leaving the island without a direct connection to the Massachusetts mainland.

Still, at a late-afternoon briefing, emergency officials in the town of Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod, said the diminished storm would likely leave only scattered power failures and downed trees.

“Basically, we’re considering it a major northeaster, and we’re used to that,” said Michael Ambriscoe, the fire chief in Chatham. “We just want the tourists to stay inside and not go running down to the beach.”

Mostly, as it skimmed over the ocean close to the Eastern Seaboard, it put a lot of people from the Carolinas to Cape Cod through time-consuming exercises they might have traded in for more pleasurable activities.

On eastern Long Island, where torrential rains fell at noon in Brookhaven and swells rose to 16 feet off Smith Point on Fire Island, mariners spent the day lashing their boats to docks or removing them from the water. Carl Darenberg, 60, hauled out 50 of the 150 boats at Montauk Maritime Basin, which he said was for a big summer storm.

“You never know where a hurricane is going,” he said. “It could go 100 miles to the west and be devastating or it could go 100 miles to the east and give us nothing.”

Andrew Derr, 37, a fishing guide who lives in Greenport, placed his 23-foot boat on a homebound trailer.

“I pulled it so I could sleep at night and not have to think about the storm surge,” he said. “Now I just need to not have a tree fall on it.”

In a more delicate exercise, Jennifer Brooke, 47, a filmmaker who lives in Sag Harbor, took the precaution of wrapping bed sheets around her tomato plants.

“The thing I’m most worried about in this storm is my garden,” she said.

By 11 a.m. Friday, with a bright sun shining in Times Square, a tropical storm watch was canceled for New York City and western Long Island, meaning that meteorologists did not expect winds to exceed 39 mph. And the storm did not make much of an impression along the Jersey Shore, either, with Earl’s center passing 200 miles off the coast. Little more than heavy rains and crisp gusts resulted.

In New York, Gov. David A. Paterson traveled to a Red Cross center in Yaphank to “ask all of Long Island, just because the storm is downgraded, let’s not drop our guard.”

“If they say it’s time to evacuate, it’s time to go,” he said at a time when meteorologists were talking about the storm’s weakening.

Ross Dickman, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service’s office in Brookhaven, N.Y., said Earl would probably not regain its strength because the waters it was passing over were too cool — below 80 degrees — to sustain its wallop as a Category 4 hurricane. It was later downgraded to a 3, then a 2, and then a 1, with winds of 75 mph.

Still, until nightfall, Suffolk County and its constellation of beach resorts remained under threat of tropical-storm-force winds that could turn outdoor furniture into projectiles. The storm’s high waves were also producing riptides, dangerous for swimmers, and eating away the sand at some beaches.

On Nantucket, where the Straight Wharf Restaurantkept Bloody Marys flowing into the afternoon, and there was talk of hurricane parties Friday night, emergency officials were closely watching a bridge to Smith’s Point in Madaket village that they feared might wash out. They were also worried about houses on dunes that were threatened with 15-foot swells. Yet in Chatham, a town on the outer elbow of Cape Cod that was expected to get some of the storm’s strongest winds, only a few shopkeepers had boarded their windows, and the sidewalks remained crowded as fog crept in.

Patrick Doherty, whose family owns the Ben Franklin variety store on Main Street, said he covered its plate-glass windows with boards for the first time in 10 years.

“They were sitting in the basement collecting dust,” he said. “I figured I might as well put them up for once.”

Outside, Sally McNicholas of Newton, Mass., was snapping pictures of her children, with the store as a backdrop. The family decided to ride out the storm at its summer home in South Yarmouth after hearing it had weakened.

“This way we can experience a hurricane without being in danger,” McNicholas said. “Do you think I’m a bad mother?”

The approach of a hurricane seems to bring out a touch of recklessness in some people. On Long Island more than few surfers and fishermen flocked to the heaving waves near Montauk at sunrise. Tommy Gilbert, 26, a Manhattan stock trader who spends weekends at his parent’s home in East Hampton, said he had not seen waves 12 feet high since Hurricane Bill last year.

“You rarely get surf this good on the East Coast, especially with these long waves that come from a ways away,” he said, zipping his wet suit.

Fishermen reported impressive catches. Gerry Muro, 70, who lives in Lloyd Harbor and summers in Montauk, said he caught 25 fish in two hours Thursday afternoon, and because of that he was back out at daybreak Friday. As a magenta sun peaked over a slate gray sea, Anthony Tarantola, 22, of Mastic, and Chris Katsabanis, 18, of Ronkonkoma, marched toward the waves with fishing rods in hand. Tarantola had persuaded Katsabanis to fish by telling him that the day before he caught 100 striped bass.

“You should have been out here,” said Tarantola, as a commercial fisherman.

Many vacationers exploited the storm’s approach as a photo opportunity. With the sky overcast, Mark Patricof was out at Wiborg Beach in East Hampton posing his daughter Lily, 14, and their Portuguese water dog, Harry, in front of waves taller than trailer trucks.

“This seems like a special event,” he said.