StormWatch: Hurricane Earl

Above is a Mariner's 1-2-3 rule for hurricane prediction, taken from the NOAA web site.
Below is a screen taken from Accuweather.com. All people in Atlantic Canada need to take special notice: This storm is level 4 and will weaken slightly to 2 or 1 before it nails Nova Scotia sometime in the early morning of Saturday.

Take special precautions!

* Buy bottled water
* Buy batteries, flashlights
* Buy canned food and can opener
* Buy a cheap radio

Hurricane Juan hit as a Category 2 storm during late September at nearly a 90-degree angle to Nova Scotia with little time to dissipate before making landfall and was just about a worst case scenario. Six people lost their lives in Nova Scotia as a result of Juan.

Earl will be arriving from the southwest, perhaps paralleling the coast or moving just inland. While this path will favor rapid weakening, it also favors more square miles of adverse effects.