Hurricane Arthur scythes through Outer Banks of North Carolina

The first hurricane of the Atlantic season has hit the North Carolina coast, a wet and windy spoiler of the July Fourth holiday for thousands of Americans as authorities ordered them to evacuate exposed areas. Hurricane Arthur crossed the coast near Cape Lookout at the southern end of North Carolina's Outer Banks at 11:15 p.m. EDT (0315 GMT) on Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (160 kph). This earned it Category 2 status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the US National Hurricane Center said. Moving northeast at 22 mph (35.6 kph), Arthur is the first hurricane to hit the United States since Superstorm Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey in October 2012 and caused $70 billion in estimated damage. ‘It (Arthur) is moving through very quickly. That's good news because the wind and the rain and the surge is not going to stay over eastern North Carolina for a long time,’ said Chris Landsea, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center. ‘We're expecting the eye of the storm to move back over the Atlantic Ocean by morning,’ he said. As of early Friday morning Arthur's eye was moving near mainland Dare County and northern Pamlico Sound with hurricane conditions spreading northward along the Outer Banks. More than 18,000 customers were without power near North Carolina's coast as Arthur rushed through early on Friday morning. However, Arthur remained a medium-sized storm with hurricane force winds extending outward only up to 40 miles (65 km) and lesser tropical storm-force winds 150 miles (240 km), according to Reuters.