Hurricane Arthur Weakens to Tropical Storm

 

Hurricane Arthur weakened on Saturday to leave New England and was felt in parts of southeastern Canada with heavy rains and winds, where he left some 250,000 homes and business premises without power.

Arthur weakened to a tropical storm on Saturday morning after landfall in the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina on Thursday night as a Category 2 hurricane, spoiling the plans of tourists on a long weekend for the holiday of Independence Day in the United States.

North Carolina reported only minor damage from Hurricane, which quickly moved to the northeast.

Arthur-now-post-tropical storm was located near Moncton, New Brunswick, after landfall a second time, this time in Canada, on Saturday afternoon, said the Canadian Hurricane Centre.

More than 141,000 users in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 110,000 were without power due to high winds and rain are expected to continue over parts of southeastern Canada on Saturday night.

Experts estimated that the storm moved east into the Northumberland Strait and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the south, on Saturday night, the hurricane center said. Maximum sustained winds were around 100 mph.

"Basically, it lost its tropical characteristics storm and has become more of a weak winter type system," said Daniel Brown, senior hurricane specialist National Hurricane Center of the United States.

Arthur was the first hurricane to hit the United States since the superstorm Sandy devastated New York and New Jersey in October 2012, causing damage to about 70,000 million.

In Maine, some communities reported power outages and downed trees, but no injuries were reported, according to the National Weather Service. 

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Additional reporting by Eric Martyn Bedford, Nova Scotia, and Gene Cherry in North Carolina, editing by Maria Cecilia Mora Edited by Patrick Abusleme in Spanish.)