By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Earl churned on a path toward the North Carolina coast of the eastern seaboard on Tuesday after lashing Puerto Rico and northeast Caribbean islands with winds, rain and waves, the National Hurricane Center said.
The forecast track of Earl, the second major hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season, showed the fringes of the powerful Category 4 storm clipping North Carolina's Outer Banks barrier islands early on Friday and also threatening the U.S. coast northward from there.
"Interests from the Carolinas northward to New England should monitor the progress of Earl," the Miami-based hurricane center said.
Barry Baxter, a hurricane center meteorologist, said forecasters had nudged the storm's track slightly to the west overnight but still had it narrowly missing a direct full-on impact to the U.S. coast.
"It's still staying off the coast at this point for the whole eastern U.S.," Baxter said.
He declined to predict how close the hurricane would come to New York when it churned offshore east of the city at the weekend.
"We just don't know," Baxter said. "It's too early at this point. We're just telling everybody to keep their eyes on the track and just keep checking back."
He said the NHC expected the hurricane to stop just short of becoming a maximum Category 5 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.
Nevertheless, forecasters say Earl is expected to bring drenching rain, dangerous seas and surf and gusting wind to the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to New England and Canada.
Earl, with top sustained winds close to 135 miles per hour, was moving away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on Tuesday and would cross the open Atlantic east of the Turks and Caicos Islands, the hurricane center said.
At 9 a.m., it was located about 230 miles east of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos, a British overseas territory.
Tropical storm warnings and watches were in effect for the Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas.
Hurricane Earl poses no threat to major U.S. oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
PUERTO RICO NOT DIRECTLY HIT
Through Monday, Earl had battered the northeastern Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico, downing power lines, blowing off some house roofs, toppling trees and causing some flooding. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
"We have been quite fortunate. We did not take a direct hit ... it was not as serious as it could have been," Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno told CNN.
Tropical storm Fiona is following in the wake of Earl on a similar expected track. At 8 a.m. EST, Fiona was located about 500 miles east of the Caribbean Leeward Islands with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, moving on a course that was expected to take it northeast of the Leeward Islands on Wednesday. Most of the forecast models did not see Fiona entering the Gulf of Mexico.
A broad area of low pressure about 400 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands in the eastern Atlantic had only a 10 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours, the hurricane center said.
Early computer models showed that system moving mostly west in the Atlantic but toward South America, not the energy-rich Gulf.
