Marylanders were taking a wait-and-see attitude late yesterday as Hurricane Bonnie crept slowly ashore near Wilmington, N.C.
While everyone waited for the hurricane to make its next move, the National Weather Service stuck with its earlier prediction that the storm would linger over eastern North Carolina, then drift over Cape Hatteras and northeastward back into the Atlantic. If so, that would deliver just a glancing blow at Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Forecasters now expect the storm to pass Maryland and Delaware beaches sometime between 6 p.m. today and 2 a.m. tomorrow.
A tropical storm warning was issued yesterday from Chincoteague, Va., to Cape Henlopen, Del.
In Ocean City, which has been on alert for the past two days, officials are developing a sense of humor about the slow-moving hurricane. Yesterday, Clay Stamp, emergency services coordinator, compared the resort town's experience to the movie "Groundhog Day," whose lead character is doomed to repeat endlessly the same day.
"To sum up the latest information from the weather service -- what we did today [Wednesday], we're going to do all over again tomorrow [Thursday]. We are basically on hold," Stamp said.
The latest projections from the National Weather Service show Bonnie stalling over North Carolina, delaying its arrival in Ocean City by about 24 hours.
The hurricane apparently will come about 50 miles closer to the resort town than previously predicted, but its winds will be diminished to tropical storm levels of about 45 mph, forecasters predict.
By tomorrow afternoon, the sun should be shining at the beach, Stamp said. The storm could bring 2 to 4 inches of rain to the area, which could cause flooding in low-lying areas.
Minor flooding in O.C.
A midday downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning caused minor flooding in many Ocean City streets yesterday. The squall sent vacationers scurrying to restaurants and shops along Coastal Highway.
So far, hotel and motel owners say they have not had many cancellations and visitors already at the beach seem willing to stick it out.
Leo and Doris Ardizzione, of Alexandria, Va., who spent the morning on the beach, said they plan to stay the rest of the week with their granddaughter, Rachel, 7, who is enjoying her first visit to the ocean.
"I guess we're not having it so bad," said Ardizzione. "We have friends who were staying in Nags Head [N.C.] this week, so they had no choice but to leave."
The Maryland Emergency Management Center in Pikesville was on its lowest level of alert yesterday.
Don Keldson, assistant director for operations at the center, said, "We're anticipating very little impact on the southern Eastern Shore -- a storm surge of 2 to 3 feet, 2 to 3 inches of rain, then also winds in the 40- to 55-mph range -- much less severe than we originally anticipated."
Even so, in Southern Maryland, boat owners checked the lines securing their sailboats or speedboats, and marina operators policed the docks to secure any items that might become projectiles should high winds hit.
"We're prowling around picking up and packing up loose items like grills, dock carts, trash cans and crab pots," said Matt Gambrill, owner of 430-slip Calvert Marina on Solomons Island. "We had a little microburst come through a week ago, take a shed roof off and knock over a sailboat. I hope this isn't near as bad."
Beyond that, most were hoping the storm would spare the area.
"We're not doing anything radical at this point," said Frank Colobro, dock master at tiny, 18-slip Solomon's Point Marina. "We can only do so much."
Navy puts jets away
At Patuxent Naval Air Station on the Chesapeake Bay in St. Mary's County, the Navy put its jet planes in hangars and pulled patrol boats from the water. But spokeswoman Sue Evans said, "We're not doing anything more than we would do during a
typical storm."
If hurricane-force winds were expected, she said, the Navy would fly its planes inland.
Although the Coast Guard closed Hampton Roads in Virginia to commercial shipping yesterday morning, ships were still able to get in and out of the Port of Baltimore yesterday through the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
In Baltimore, the Living Classrooms Foundation on South Caroline Street decided earlier this week to wait out the possible bad weather by bringing its four sailboats into the protected waters of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The boats, used in teaching thousands of students, were tied up Tuesday at Pier 5.
Andy Woodcock, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Sterling, Va., forecast office, said Bonnie was stranded just off Wilmington because the high-altitude winds that steer hurricanes like corks in a stream, had fallen slack.
"Its movement is really uncertain at this time," he said. "It may drift slowly north into eastern North Carolina. The area that needs to be concerned right now is southeastern Virginia."
Of greatest concern with a slow-moving hurricane, he said, is heavy rain and flooding.
"If it sits through several tidal cycles and the water builds up, it could be very bad flooding at the beaches. There are lots of scenarios you could come up with."
The fundamental lesson about hurricanes is always the same: they are capable of nearly anything. "Nothing is out of the ordinary for the movement of a hurricane," Woodcock said. "No movement would surprise me with this guy right now."
Ecological impact studied
Meanwhile, environmental scientists were planning to monitor the storm, and to try to assess what harm, if any, it might do to the Chesaeake Bay. Tropical Storm Agnes, which dumped 17 inches of rain on the upper bay watershed in 1972, devastated some shellfish beds and helped trigger a severe decline in bay grasses.
J. Court Stevenson, an ecologist at the University of Maryland's Horn Point Environmental Laboratory, said a colleague has sampled water in the upper Choptank River in order to compare it with water quality right after the storm hits.
Stevenson said he and other scientists may try to measure the nutrient content of storm-produced rains, and will check on bay grass beds after the storm passes.
"If we have a hurricane in August, we're going to see much reduced viability in the [grass] beds in the spring," predicted Stevenson.
The high-altitude "steering" winds that prevail over the more northern East Coast states usually shove approaching hurricanes toward the east or northeast before they can make a direct assault on Maryland.
William M. Gray, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, has studied landfalls of "intense" hurricanes (those with winds of 111 mph or more). He found that since 1900, not a single intense storm has made first landfall between Cape Hatteras and New York City -- a span that includes Maryland.
Storms of past
But several have crashed through the state after making landfall in the Carolinas, as Bonnie has.
The Great Hurricane of August 1933, which arrived 20 years before the storms were named, slammed across the Outer Banks and into southeastern Virginia and then straight up the Chesapeake's Western Shore.
It's the most dangerous track for Maryland, because it brings the storms' strongest winds -- to the right of their eyes -- onto the mainland and the bay.
The 1933 storm carved the inlet at Ocean City with 20- and 30-foot waves and killed 22 people. The bay tide climbed a record 8 feet ahead of 80-mph winds, and the storm clouds dropped 11 inches of rain on the city.
In October 1954, Hurricane Hazel came ashore in South Carolina, then charged north across Central Maryland and Pennsylvania before losing itself in the wilds of western New York and Canada.
Hazel killed 11 people in Maryland, destroyed 3,000 homes and 1,000 tobacco barns. Baltimore saw sustained winds of 60 to 70 mph, with higher gusts. Tides surged 6 feet above normal; trees and power lines toppled.
In August 1955, hurricanes Connie and Diane swept Maryland within four days of each other. Like Bonnie, they came ashore near Wilmington. But they crossed Maryland before swerving east and north toward New England. Connie caused widespread coastal damage and flooding and set a 24-hour rainfall record in Baltimore of 8.49 inches. Fourteen people drowned when their boat capsized in the Chesapeake.
Hurricane Donna skirted the East Coast in September 1960. Its center passed 60 miles off Maryland's beaches, but torrential rains and gusts to 110 mph tore roofs off buildings in Ocean City and forced 3,000 people to evacuate their homes.
Hurricanes Agnes in June 1972 and David in September 1979 had waned to tropical storm status by the time they reached Maryland. But heavy rains from Agnes killed 21 people, caused $83 million in damage and left long-lasting environmental changes behind in the Chesapeake Bay. David killed one and left $30 million in damage in the state.
Pub Date: 8/27/98