Irene bears down on U.S.; hurricane may drench region by Sunday

While the East Coast was rattled by an earthquake Tuesday, those up and down the Atlantic shores are also anxious this week to see what path Hurricane Irene takes next.Irene is the first hurricane to pose a serious threat to the U.S. in three years and it cut a destructive path through the Caribbean earlier this week.Computer weather models on Tuesday had the storm’s outer bands sweeping Florida late this week before it takes aim at the Carolinas. Forecasters say the hurricane could grow to a monstrous Category 4 storm with winds of more than 131 mph before it’s predicted to come ashore this weekend on the U.S. mainland. Experts caution, however, that predictions made days in advance can be off by hundreds of miles.As for New England and the North Shore, Meteorologist Alan Dunham of the National Weather Service office in Taunton said it’s simply too early to tell what Irene or her remnants will do here.”We’ll definitely be getting some impact like heavy rain sometime Sunday evening or Monday, but it’s just too early,” Dunham said.Irene slashed directly across Puerto Rico, tearing up trees and knocking out power to more than a million people. It then headed out to sea, north of the Dominican Republic, where the powerful storm’s outer bands were buffeting the north coast with dangerous sea surge and downpours. President Barack Obama declared an emergency for Puerto Rico, making it eligible for federal help.Hundreds were displaced by flooding in the Dominican Republic, forced to take refuge in churches, schools or relatives’ homes. Electricity also was cut in some areas.Fortunately for New England, hurricane systems typically veer out to the Atlantic before making it this far north.”There’s a jet stream that goes across the northern part of the country and that pushes the hurricanes out to sea once they reach the Carolinas or so,” Dunham said. “They don’t come up here quite as often as they do down in Florida or the Carolinas, but New England has quite a long history of hurricanes.”According to the National Weather Service, 25 hurricanes and 18 tropical storms have impacted New England since 1900. Nine hurricanes have made landfall on the New England coast, four of which were category three intensity. When such hurricanes do hit, Southern New England lies in the unenviable position of receiving all three “hurricane threats” – coastal inundation due to the storm surge, widespread inland river flooding and widespread wind damage far inland.The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami expected Irene to reach Category 3 strength on Tuesday, said spokesman Dennis Feltgen. For now, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season had maximum sustained winds early Tuesday around 100 mph and currently was centered about 70 miles south of Grand Turk Island. The hurricane was moving west-northwest near 12 mph.Associated Press material was used in this report.