Salter Path, N.C. – Hurricane Ophelia, North Carolina’s least welcome guest, refused again to leave Thursday, lashing the Outer Banks with rain and wind as coastal residents elsewhere returned home to damaged homes and businesses.
Ophelia just “beat us and beat us and beat us,” one storm-weary resident said before the system was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday night when its sustained winds dropped to 70 mph.
While the weakening storm’s center was expected to stay just off shore, the northern side of Ophelia’s eyewall, the ring of high wind surrounding the eye, could remain over the Outer Banks until midday today, the National Hurricane Center said.
Gov. Mike Easley said gauging the scope of the damage was difficult because of the storm’s slow path, first affecting the state’s southeastern coast on Tuesday and then crawling north and east Wednesday and Thursday to its position off the Outer Banks.
“It’s almost like working three different storms,” Easley said.
More than 48,000 homes and businesses remained without power Thursday evening in eastern North Carolina, utilities officials said. That was down from a peak of about 120,000 the previous night.
It appeared the mainland had dodged the severe flooding many had feared, but the wind and waves had taken a toll.
At Salter Path on Bogue Banks, southwest of Morehead City, fire Capt. Joey Frost estimated that as many as 25 people had to be rescued. In neighboring Emerald Isle, six houses were destroyed and more than 120 had major damage.
Ophelia, an erratic storm that has looped and meandered north since forming off the Florida coast last week, stalled early Thursday afternoon, then resumed a slow eastward drift toward the open ocean, the hurricane center said.
A hurricane warning for the North Carolina coast was reduced to a tropical storm warning, extending from Cape Lookout northward to Cape Charles Light, Va., including the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, the hurricane center said.
The storm was blamed for one traffic death. Earlier, a surfer disappeared in rough water off the coast of South Carolina.
