Hurricane Arthur, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, raked North Carolina’s Outer Banks, but thankfully proved to be a near miss along the Eastern Seaboard.
No deaths or injuries directly resulted from Arthur’s passage through the area, with reported losses in Dare County amounting to a little less than $2 million, according to a report by The Outer Banks Voice.
In records dating from 1851, the hurricane was the first to make landfall in North Carolina this early in the season. The earliest previous arrival was on July 11, 1901.
Although Americans put the storm in the rearview mirror after a July 4 washout in the Northeast, the remnants of Arthur plowed straight into the Canadian Maritimes.
Members of the Charlottetown Yacht Club in the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island were gathered at the waterfront Saturday to tend to their boats as the docks bucked and rolled with near-hurricane-strength southwesterly winds reaching 55 to 60 knots.
By 7 p.m., one boat had already sunk. Others broke free from their moorings, and masts continued to get knocked down as the boats moved about in the water, according to a report by The Guardian.
As the wind howled and the waves crashed, members at the Charlottetown Yacht Club could only watch.
“They really can’t do anything. They are sitting back, and it’s really too dangerous to even go out on one of the docks to tie a line down or anything like that,” vice commodore Kerry Marsh said. “We brought in emergency measures now where we are keeping people off the docks and away from some of the boats.”
One of those onlookers, Mohamed Mahjoubi, said he was vacationing on the island from Montreal and arrived in Charlottetown on his boat 10 days ago.
“Right now I can see my boat and I can’t do anything,” he said. With a coffee in hand, he looked out at the marina as massive waves consumed the docks.
“The storm is unbelievable,” he said.
