Whew! Ophelia Loses Steam

That's a relief — I was really sweating it for our fellow North Carolinians on the Outer Banks.

From the AP:

Hurricane Ophelia was downgraded to a tropical storm again Monday as the indecisive weather system moved slowly off the coast, its outer bands of rain not quite reaching land...
In North Carolina, Gov. Mike Easley on Sunday ordered 200 National Guard soldiers to report to staging centers in the eastern part of the state. The governor also ordered a mandatory evacuation of nonresidents from fragile Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, reachable only by ferry.