(AP) – The eye of Hurricane Dorian is passing just east of Cape Lookout as the Category 1 storm skirts North Carolina’s coast.
Sustained, hurricane-force winds are battering the southern Outer Banks, a 200-mile-long chain of low-lying barrier islands and spits off North Carolina. The center of the storm is around 25 miles east of Cape Lookout and 55 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, further north in the Outer Banks.
Top sustained winds are near 90 mph and the storm is moving northeast at 14 mph.
As of 5 a.m., the National Hurricane Center replaced a hurricane warning with a tropical storm warning from South Santee River to Little River Inlet in South Carolina. The storm-surge warning south of Surf City, North Carolina, has been discontinued.