Hurricane Lee barreled across the North Atlantic toward New England and Eastern Canada on Friday, threatening to bring drenching rains, powerful winds and a life-threatening storm surge to the region over the weekend, Reuters gathered.
A statement by Canadian Hurricane Center said, Lee is expected to weaken into a strong tropical storm before making landfall in southwestern Nova Scotia as a strong tropical storm on Saturday afternoon.
Even so, the storm has the capacity to dump as much as 4 inches (10 cm) of rain and produce winds of up to 60 mph (97 kph) in some spots, prompting U.S. and Canadian officials to urge people to brace for possible flooding and power outages.
Tropical Storm conditions were expected in southeastern New England on Friday night, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center, which issued a tropical storm warning for hundreds of miles of coastline from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, affecting some 9 million people.
Some spots, such as Cape Cod in Massachusetts and eastern Halifax County in Nova Scotia, may be in for a storm surge of up to 3 feet (91 cm), forecasters said.
As of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Friday, the storm was about 290 miles (465 km) southeast of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket as it moved north at about 20 mph (31 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. It was expected to pick up speed and weaken through the day, the weather service said.
Lee is the latest storm in what is proving to be a busy hurricane season that has featured a higher-than-average number of named storms.
