Hurricane forecasters across North America say Earl is no joke.
The storm has regained Category Four status and is blowing towards North Carolina with top winds of 220 km an hour.
Vacationers and residents along that state's Outer Banks packed up and fled inland yesterday, cutting short their Labour Day getaways.
The Canadian Hurricane Centre's latest tracking models suggest a weakened Earl will swipe the U-S coast and roar into southern Nova Scotia early Saturday.
Hurricane Centre meterologist Chris Fogarty says there's currently a 50 per cent chance Earl will hit Nova Scotia as a category one hurricane with top winds of 140 km/hr.
He says forecasters are watching the powerful storm very closely.
"I'm certainly concerned with these warmer-than-normal waters that are out there that will lessen the rate of weakening of a storm's tropical character," he said.
Earl is expected to make landfall in Yarmouth and then track up the Bay of Fundy.
News 95.7 meterologist Richard Zurawski says landfall in Yarmouth means heavy rains and winds for the rest of the Maritimes - and he says it's not weather to take lightly.
"It's big in extent and it's an intense storm and the water is warm," he said. "So a 50 per cent chance of getting a hurricane in the Yarmouth area doesn't bode well for any part of the mainland of Nova Scotia or southern New Brunswick.
Zurawski says he's expecting power outages, coastal flooding and downed trees if Earl hits as expected - and he says those warnings shouldn't be dismissed as sensationalism.
"These are serious things," he said. "We've got storm surge, property damage, electrical outages - the fact that we're talking about it means that we mitigate a lot of the potentially dangerous things."
The storm track could still vary in the next 24 hours, but both Zurawski and Fogarty say Maritimers should prepare for bad weather on Saturday.