Bermuda advised its residents last night to stay off the streets as Hurricane Bill followed a path between the island and the US east coast.
The core of the large hurricane was expected to stay over the open Atlantic as it passes west of Bermuda early today and east of Cape Cod in Massachusetts early tomorrow, before starting to skirt eastern Canada.
Bill could threaten some oil and natural gas platforms and refineries in eastern Canada.
Officials from the Canadian Hurricane Centre said they expect the storm to pass along Nova Scotia's eastern shore tomorrow and hit southeastern areas of Newfoundland and Labrador tomorrow night or early on Monday morning.
The US National Hurricane Centre said Bill, the first hurricane of the 2009 Atlantic season, had become a little less organised and its maximum sustained winds had dropped slightly to near 160 km/h.
It was a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity and its strength was expected to fluctuate in the next day or two.
Shops and businesses closed early in Bermuda to allow people in the 53 sq km British territory, which is a centre for the global insurance industry, to go home and prepare for the storm's passing.
The Bermuda weather service said Bill's storm tide would raise water levels by as much as a metre above ground level along the coast, and cause "large and dangerous battering waves".
By this morning, the hurricane's centre was about 300 kilometres west-southwest of Bermuda.
Bermudian authorities warned the island's 68,000 inhabitants to stay alert.
"Stay off the roads, stay off the beaches and stay close to home - please think safety first," Acting Home Affairs Minister Walter Roban urged.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill wrapped up a brief private holiday in Bermuda and left the island ahead of the storm on Thursday, the State Department said.
The Miami-based NHC said there was only a 25 per cent chance of Bill's tropical storm force winds reaching the extreme southeast of the New England coast in the United States.
Reuters
