Miami, Sept. 11 (Reuters): Hurricane Ophelia hovered off the coast of the southeastern US today and could hit North Carolina later in the week, forecasters said.

But forecasters at the US National Hurricane Center in Miami cautioned that Ophelia’s path was unusually hard to project because the storm was not moving.

North Carolina governor Mike Easley declared emergency yesterday and local officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for non-residents on the low-lying vacation island of Ocracoke on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

A hurricane watch was in effect from Edisto Beach, South Carolina, cautioning millions of residents that fierce winds and other hurricane conditions were possible within 36 hours.

At 1200 GMT, the storm’s centre was 408 km south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Ophelia had top sustained winds of 136 km per hour and was not expected to strengthen much or even move much in the next two days, the hurricane centre forecasters said.

They expect the hurricane to eventually move north and hit North Carolina on Wednesday or Thursday.

Ophelia was a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, meaning it could be accompanied by a four- to five- feet storm surge. Such storms can flood coastal roads and damage piers, trees and unanchored mobile homes but rarely cause structural damage.

Hurricane Katrina was a far more powerful Category 4 storm when it hit the US Gulf coast before devastating much of Louisiana and Mississippi.

More than 3,000 tourists and 800 residents were on Ocracoke Island, which is reachable only by boat or plane, according to the Hyde County Emergency Management Coordinator, Tony Spencer.

“The evacuation is going orderly, but a lot of folks don’t understand the logistics of needing to evacuate early,” Spencer said.

No other North Carolina county was under an evacuation order, a spokesperson for the state Emergency Management Center said.