Earl bypasses Jersey Shore, drops to tropical storm

Having secured a place in obscurity in local weather lore, once-mighty Hurricane Earl, now a tropical storm, sped toward dissolution in the North Atlantic on Friday, leaving in its wake perhaps the most splendid weekend of the summer.

At the Shore, even at its worst, Earl wasn't all that bad, passing almost harmlessly 200 miles off the coast Friday, a far-lesser version of the behemoth it had been just the day before. Nameless thunderstorms have made far more of an impact, and by 5 p.m., the sun had reemerged on the Jersey Shore.

Late Friday, Earl's winds dropped below 74 m.p.h., stripping it of hurricane status, as the storm arrived at Cape Cod.

Diane F. Wieland, the Cape May County tourism director, invoked two words to sum up the storm's legacy: "Earl who?"

A less-than-ferocious 40 m.p.h. peak wind gust was reported in Atlantic City, where the rain total was a paltry 0.04 of an inch.

Only the day before, Earl had generated ripples of anxiety from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Nova Scotia as its winds approached 145 m.p.h.

But it was captured by benign steering currents that spared the East Coast a direct hit. Its center missed Cape Hatteras by about 85 miles, and only minor damage was reported in North Carolina.

Ultimately, rather than classic wind and flood trauma, the problems Earl caused resulted more from its enormous size; its ambitious itinerary; and the waves it agitated, which were blamed for at least one drowning in New Jersey.

The pounding surf damaged concrete pilings under Atlantic City's Garden Pier, site of the Atlantic City Historical Museum and Arts Centers. The facilities were closed while the extent of damage is determined. In the city's Inlet section, moderate to heavy beach erosion was reported near Rhode Island Avenue.

Farther north, as Earl arced toward New England, Amtrak suspended train service between New York City and Boston until Saturday morning. Some airlines canceled flights, and vacationers were stranded when Nantucket ferry service was stopped.

However, Earl appeared content to get out of the way and allow mid-Atlantic residents and visitors to get on with their Labor Day weekends.

Weather-wise, it should be a magnificent three days at the Shore - brilliantly sunny, highs near 80 - thanks to the air-cleansing front that helped repel Earl.

What's more, just as the Atlantic storm brewery is in full production mode, the upper-air pattern may keep the East Coast hurricane-resistant for at least the next several days, meteorologists said Friday.

"That will take us on into mid-September, and we'll be on the downtrend" of the hurricane season, said Tom Skinner, a meteorologist with Telvent DTN, which provides weather services for energy companies, airports, and other businesses.

For the time being at least - and the season is only about half over - Earl might be as bad as it gets.

"If all we got out of what looked like a massive storm is a little tidal flooding in the streets in the usual places where it floods during a storm, than I'd say we're ahead of the game," said Michele Gillian, head of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce.

And, yes, that's all there was, despite the fact that on Friday her office was inundated with calls from anxious would-be visitors and property owners.

In Ocean City and up and down the coast Friday, beach patrols had closed the churned-up surf to swimmers. Officials said they would assess Saturday whether to reopen the waters. Also pending was a decision to resume the Cape May-Lewes Ferry service.

Closed surf or not, the ocean was a major draw all day Friday.

"You have to come out and see what Mother Nature is doing - and it is spectacular," said Mary Antonucci of Hammonton, who is staying in Cape May for the weekend, as she admired the waves at the Madison Avenue beach.

But Shaun Davis, 36, of Ocean City, a lifelong Shore resident, sounded a tad crestfallen over Earl's performance: "It was a lot of hype with this one."

It was unclear when that next tropical storm might show up, even though a storm queue is building in the Atlantic Basin. So far, halfway through the season, six named storms, those with winds of 39 m.p.h. or more, have formed in the basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

That's a tad ahead of schedule - No. 6 on average forms by Sept. 8 - but well below expectations in what forecasters had foreseen as a potentially monstrous season. The seasonal average is 11.

Being shut off from tropical storms does have one drawback, said Dean Iovino, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly. The region's precipitation deficits are growing, and brittle leaves are starting to cover browning lawns.

"We could use a little bit of rain," Iovino said, "but we don't need a devastating storm."