The forecast track is looking dicey for the SE coast.  Jax and Savannah haven’t been hit by a major for a long time. 

Hoping and praying this will curve further east and avoid the coast, but right now everyone from S. FL to the Outerbanks needs to watch this very closely.

Unfortunately, the way the storm intensified even while over Puerto Rico last night reminds me a bit of how Katrina strengthened from a TS to a Cat1 hurricane over South Florida in 2005.

We really need rain in North Carolina.  Let us pray for a tropical storm rather than a hurricane, to bring rain but not disaster.

Oh dear. The 2:00 update today shows this hitting Charleston on Saturday morning, possibly as a Category 3.

Katherine, batten down the hatches, because it’s gonna be a rough one!  I went through a hurricane named Irene years ago, and it wasn’t pretty!

If memory serves, I think this one is on the same track as Hugo.

Time will tell about Irene’s track.  At this point it looks like it will curve towards east and central North Carolina after hitting Charleston.  Hugo went northwest through Charlotte and western NC.  But it’s a bit early to be predicting exactly where this will go.  And even the hit on Charleston is not certain at this point.  It’s been several years since we had any big hurricanes in the Carolinas, which is unusual.

Please pray for the people in the Bahamas.  We were there 13 years ago for Hurricane Floyd and it is a scary time for all.  Luckily we had no deaths on our island but there was terrific damage done to homes and churches alike- and no electricity or water for months and months afterwards in some places.