Hurricane Dorian blows just off North Carolina
Hurricane Dorian continues to scrape the North Carolina coast just offshore, with the worst weather hitting the Outer Banks.
The storm's strong winds and heavy rains early Friday knocked out power to about 194,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina.
PowerOutage.US reports 160,000 outages remain in South Carolina after Dorian scraped that state's coast Thursday.
Authorities haven't reported any major damage, but were waiting for daylight to make a more comprehensive assessment.
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The center of the storm has remained off the North Carolina coast. A weather station on Cape Lookout recorded winds of 75 mph (121 kph) as the eye of Dorian passes less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) away.
People who live in southeastern Virginia are beginning to lose their electricity as Dorian blows up the Atlantic Coast.
Dominion Energy reported on its website Friday that more than 7,000 people have lost power. Most of the outages are in the cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Both cities border North Carolina and are home to hundreds of thousands of people.
The city of Norfolk is also reporting outages.
Much of Virginia's Hampton Roads region is already shut down in anticipation of the storm. Schools have closed. Mass transit has stopped running. And the area's large military bases are operating with only mission-essential personnel.
As of 5 a.m., the National Hurricane Center replaced a hurricane warning with a tropical storm warning from South Santee River to Little River Inlet in South Carolina. The storm-surge warning south of Surf City, North Carolina, has been discontinued.
Hurricane Dorian has weakened somewhat to a Category 1 storm, but forecasters say the threat posed to the southeastern U.S. coast hasn't abated.