Nightly News   |  August 23, 2011

Irene weakens, but likely to regain strength

Hurricane Irene weakened a bit in the Caribbean Tuesday but officials warned it would likely regain strength and that the entire U.S. East Coast should be on alert. WNBC meteorologist Janice Huff joins Brian Williams.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> to our other big story along the eastern seaboard tonight. a big hurricane and the threat of it coming along and hitting places that haven't been hit by a hurricane for a long, long time. this story falls to our friend janice huff , meteorologist for wnbc tv in new york. you got family in the carolinas. i got family on the jersey coast. i'm looking at the possibility maps all day. it has grown and it has faltered to a one but you expect it to explode?

>> it's moving over turks and caicos right now. it's dropped off and it's a category 1 storm but it's expected to intensify once again to a category 2 and then a 3. right now the hurricane warnings are in effect for all of the bahamas and the likelihood that florida will see tropical storm -force winds and tropical storm force conditions. it's outside of the cone but you have to watch if you're in south florida and watch the entire cone. notice it comes all the way up the eastern seaboard over the general coastline of the carolinas, cape hatteras on saturday, possibly as a category 3 storm there. and then on up the coast towards washington, d.c., maryland, also even in new york city , by sunday, we could be looking at flooding rains and heavy, heavy winds.

>> we have a map of those spaghetti strings that show the computer probabilities and among other things, they're expecting 500,000 people upwards for the mlk dedication in d.c. sunday morning. not good timing but worrisome to new yorkers. we haven't had a real hit up here in a long time.

>> it's been a long time and meteorologists are looking at those spaghetti tracks we call them on the forecast models. it's ironic that this particular storm is taking a very similar path to a hurricane that hit in 1821 and moved over new york city , maybe the only one that ever did it and it brought a 13 foot storm surge to lower manhattan .

>> guess what, your job is to move it out to sea.

>> i'll see what i can do. wish i could.

>> we'll keep a close eye on this issue. janice huff , thank you as always.