NAGS HEAD, N.C. (AP) - Hurricane Ophelia picked up strength as it closed in on North Carolina on Wednesday, but many in the storm's path had shrugged off the threat of wind and flooding rain and ignored pleas to evacuate. The storm had sustained wind of 80 mph Wednesday morning, up from 75 mph a few hours earlier, the National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane warning was in effect from about Georgetown, S.C., to Oregon Inlet in North Carolina's Outer Banks, about 275 miles, and a tropical storm warning extended from Oregon Inlet to the Virginia line.
Heavy rain was falling along the coast.
One side of Ophelia's eyewall—the circle of strongest wind surrounding the eye—was expected to move along North Carolina's southeast coast late Thursday, the hurricane center said.
Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which made a head-on charge at the Gulf Coast two weeks ago, Ophelia had slowly meandered since forming off the Florida coast last week, making it hard for some to take the storm seriously.
"We're just having a grand time," said Diane Komorowski of Philadelphia, as she walked through the choppy surf on the Outer Banks with her husband. "They keep saying, 'It's coming,'—yet every day, it's great here."
However, the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast prompted others to take Ophelia seriously.
"We got such a dose of it on TV, it's almost impossible not to be concerned," said Roger Kehoe, 68, of Yardley, Pa., one of the visitors who left a campground at Myrtle Beach, S.C.
At Wrightsville Beach, the Scotchman convenience store opened for business early Wednesday, although the windows were boarded up.
"The company told me to keep the store open as long as I could because the people are going to need supplies," manager Dennis Uncapher said.
At 8 a.m. EDT, Ophelia was centered about 60 miles south of Wilmington and about 110 miles southwest of Cape Lookout on the Outer Banks. Slight strengthening was possible.
Ophelia was moving at 6 mph toward the north-northeast. It was expected to gradually turn toward the northeast and pick up a little speed by late Wednesday, with the center making landfall close to the Outer Banks on Thursday, the hurricane center said.
The forecast storm track had it then moving out to sea. But the storm's slow progress meant heavy rain could linger over land and cause serious flooding. The hurricane center said up to 15 inches of rain was possible in eastern North Carolina.
Along the exposed Outer Banks, everyone was ordered to evacuate Hatteras Island, visitors had been ordered off Ocracoke Island and the National Park Service closed the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. Schools were closed and nearly 100 people had checked into a shelter in an elementary school in Wilmington.
Bruce McIlvaine of Logan Township, N.J., was among those who cleared out Tuesday, packing to leave Hatteras Island before his vacation ended.
"I don't really want to mess with it," he said. "You're on a spit of land a dozen miles into the ocean."
A surfer was missing along the South Carolina coast, with the search suspended because of rough seas.
Ophelia is the 15th named storm and seventh hurricane in this year's busy Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1 and ends Nov. 30.
___
Associated Press writers Paul Nowell in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., Jeffrey Collins in Avon, N.C., and Tom Foreman Jr. and Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
