166,000the number of square miles Hurricane Earl covers
160,000the number of square miles California covers source
» It’s going to nail a lot of places: The Outer Banks of North Carolina will get hit first by the Category 4 storm, but there are watches and warnings as far up the coast as Maine, and it looks like it’s on a relatively direct path towards Massachusetts, which just filed a hurricane warning.
A small error of 100 miles in the wrong direction could be a huge impact difference. Even a minor shift back to the west could bring impacts to portions of the coastline from the mid-Atlantic northwards.
National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read • Discussing how bad Hurricane Earl could be for the East Coast. The hurricane on its current track is unlikely to hit the coast with its full force, but it’s probably going to nail the outlying islands of North Carolina and then go up the East Coast, heading towards Cape Cod and Maine by Friday night. Protip: Careful about planning a Labor Day Weekend trip to the Outer Banks. source
