CHATHAM, Mass. — The remnants of Hurricane Earl dumped wind-driven rain on Cape Cod’s gray-shingled cottages and fishing villages Friday night, but its close brush with the Northeast was less intense than feared only hours earlier.
Earl swooped into New England waters as a tropical storm with sustained winds of 70 mph after sideswiping North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where it caused flooding but no injuries and little damage.
The storm’s approach disrupted vacations on the unofficial final weekend of the summer, but the swirling rain it brought to Cape Cod, Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard on Friday was typical of the nor’easters that residents have been dealing with for generations.
Winds on Nantucket, closest to the storm’s center, were blowing at about 30 mph, with gusts above 40 mph. The island got about 1.5 inches of rain through 11 p.m., with more expected. Flooding of low-lying areas was expected and damage from tropical- storm-force winds was still possible, officials said.
The well-to-do resort island and old-time whaling port briefly saw some localized flooding, but it was typical of summer storms and had cleared within hours, Nantucket Assistant Town Manager Gregg Tivnan said. There were no evacuations, power outages or even reports of trees down, he said.
“The south side of the island certainly did take a hit. We’ll assess the damage and the erosion to the beach tomorrow but so far don’t have any report of major damage,” Tivnan said late Friday.
In the hours and days before the storm, vacationers had pulled their boats from the water and canceled Labor Day weekend reservations on Nantucket. Shopkeepers boarded up their windows.
Airlines canceled dozens of flights into New England, and Amtrak suspended train service between New York and Boston.
The storm was expected to pass about 50 to 75 miles southeast of Nantucket after midnight Friday. It had accelerated throughout the afternoon and evening, National Weather Service meteorologist Rebecca Gould said.
The storm weakened faster than predicted and would continue to diminish, Gould said.
Earl dulled quickly over the course of 36 hours. At midday Friday, it had dropped to a Category 1 storm — down from a fearsome Category 4 with 145 mph winds a day earlier. At 11 p.m., it was downgraded to a tropical storm.
Earl stayed far off New Jersey and the eastern tip of New York’s Long Island as it made its way north.
“Where is the hurricane everybody’s been talking about?” asked Lenard LoBiondo as he stood with a drink and some relatives, telling truths on the deck outside the Liar’s Saloon, a longtime locals hangout by a marina in Montauk, N.Y. As he spoke shortly after 9 p.m., a soft drizzle was falling and there was barely a breeze.
On the Outer Banks, officials had urged tens of thousands of visitors and residents to leave the dangerously exposed islands as the storm closed in, but hundreds chose to wait it out in their boarded-up homes.
Earl’s winds had dropped to 105 mph by the time the storm brushed past the ribbon of islands before dawn Friday, and the storm center got no closer to shore than 85 miles.
