LI put on alert for Hurricane Irene

NASSAU, Bahamas -- The Eastern Seaboard, including Long Island, was put on alert for Hurricane Irene Tuesday, as the powerful storm barreled up from the Caribbean.

Even as the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic season pounded the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeast Bahamas Tuesday, forecasters warned that it could make its presence known on Long Island with high surf and dangerous currents as early as Friday night, forecasters said.

Joe Pollina, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Upton, stressed that the hurricane's track could change in coming days, but said that some models showed it reaching the area between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday. "It will be windy and we will see heavy rain with this system," Pollina said, though "by the time it gets to our neck of the woods it will be decreasing in intensity."

Irene is the ninth named storm of the busy June-through-November season and looks set to be the first hurricane to hit the United States since Ike pounded the Texas coast in 2008.

It weakened Tuesday to a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of intensity, but could strengthen into a major Category 3 storm with winds over 111 miles per hour by Thursday, the Hurricane Center forecasters said.

While warning the entire U.S. East Coast to be on the alert, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate and National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said it was too early to be certain where Irene would directly hit the coastline.

"We're going to have a very large tropical cyclone move up the Eastern Seaboard over the next five to seven days," Read said on a conference call in which he and Fugate spoke.

Irene was forecast to approach the coast of the Carolinas Saturday morning as a major storm of Category 3 or upward, Read said.

It's been more than a decade since the East Coast has been hit by a major hurricane, considered a Category 3 with winds of at least 111 mph.

The last hurricane to hit the U.S. was Ike in 2008. The last Category 3 or higher to hit the Carolinas was Bonnie in 1998, but caused less damage than other memorable hurricanes: Hugo in 1989, Floyd in 1999 and Isabel in 2003.

At 8 p.m. Tuesday, Irene had top winds of 90 miles per hour and was centered 90 miles east of Great Inagua Island in the southern Bahamas.

Voluntary evacuations were to begin Wednesday for parts of North Carolina's Outer Banks, the stretch of barrier islands and beaches jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. But Perdue cautioned that premature alarm could unnecessarily ruin the closing days of the coastal tourist season and said no final decision on evacuations would be made until Thursday.