It's looking less likely that the Georgia coast will take a direct hit from Hurricane Irene, but forecasters are warning that tropical storm conditions could still be possible by the weekend.
Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Karen Minton said Tuesday morning that each run of the various computer forecasting models takes the path of Irene further to the east and away from the Georgia coast.
The National Hurricane Center's official forecast track has Irene making landfall along the North Carolina coast Saturday night, but the margin of error on that forecast goes far enough to the west to still include coastal counties of Georgia.
Even if the current projections hold true and the storm passes well offshore, forecasters at the National Weather Service office in Jacksonville, whose area of responsibility includes the Georgia coast, said that "tropical storm conditions are possible, especially over coastal waters and coastal counties."
Tropical storm conditions could begin early Friday and continue through Saturday in Georgia's coastal counties.
Weather Service forecasters in Atlanta said early Tuesday that Irene's effect on the metro area's weather will likely be limited to "breezy" conditions Friday night into Saturday.
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, Irene was centered north of Hispaniola, and was packing sustained winds of 100 mph. The storm is expected to intensify into a major, or Category 3 or higher, hurricane with winds over 110 mph before making landfall on the Carolina coast.
If the storm did steer more to the west and come ashore along the Georgia coast as a major hurricane, it would be the first hurricane to do so in over a century.
"Looking back at historical records, a hurricane making landfall on the Georgia coast is rare," Minton said.
The last major hurricane to hit the Georgia coast, in 1898, was one of the deadliest in U.S. history, killing 179 people.
Minton said that the last hurricane of any strength to strike the Georgia coast was Hurricane David in 1979, which hit south of Savannah with winds of 92 mph.
In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd prompted massive evacuations along the Georgia, South Carolina and Florida coasts, but didn't come ashore in Georgia, Minton said.
"But of course, a storm doesn't have to make landfall on our coast to have an impact," she said. "We will be watching and monitoring the latest data on Irene throughout the week."
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