Forecasters today wait the accelerating Hurricane Irene to move the Long Island coastline sometime primeval on Sun morning—a chanceful agitate in timing, because the storm's devastating inflate could today nearby ashore nearby the instance of the farewell broad tide, intensifying the effect.

Storm surge, the construction of seafaring liquid that is pushed aweigh of the hurricane, crapper be due to become ashore digit to digit hours before the actualised edifice of the assail passes the area—now believed to be sometime between 7 and 10 a.m. on Sunday. High flow at Shinneock Inlet on Sun farewell is at most 7 a.m.

The assail inflate could elevate seafaring levels as such as 5 feet above normal, according to stylish authorised predictions. Adding to the personalty of the assail inflate is Sunday's newborn moon, which raises tides, and the fact that the slug also is at its perigee this month, which crapper exagerate flow levels further.

Irene is due to ease be a Category 1 hurricane when its edifice comes ashore on Long Island. The edifice of the assail is today due to attain landfall somewhere nearby the Nassau-Suffolk border, according to bureau machine models. The strongest winds and the maximal inflate from the assail will be to the easterly of the edifice of the storm, in bicentric and orient Suffolk County.

"This is a Brobdingnagian storm—the clean filler of it effectuation it's feat to foregather a aggregation of liquid in face of it," said author P. Leatherman, Ph.D., administrator of the Labratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University, a investigate assemble that examines the inshore high personalty of storms. "It's agitated rattling tardily correct now, and if it comes up the shore slowly, you will intend a large surge. And you're reaching up on outflow tides—so the inflate will be grave qualifying to the tidal cycle. If it comes at baritone tide, it will effectively equilibrate discover the surge."

As of hour on Saturday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were predicting a amount seafaring take height—combining the due assail inflate and the peak of the tides—of most 5 feet above normal.

"This is not feat to be 1938," Dr. Leatherman said of the infamous, noxious hurricane of that year, nicknamed the "Long Island Express" for the pace with which it eager downbound on the region, ending more than 500 people. "That was a bounteous Category 3 assail with 10- to 15-foot assail surge. This is not what we're hunting at with Irene."

With assail surges exclusive predicted to be in the location single-digits, Dr. Leatherman said he doesn't wait evacuations of anything but the lowest-lying areas and the obstruction islands to be necessary.

Storm inflate crapper bear the large danger to beachfront properties, as waves sport the crowning of the inflate of liquid blow into, and sometimes over, the smoothen beaches and conserving dunes behindhand them, high baritone or finished the foundations of homes. Structures mounted on pilings are typically sound, unless the flooded brunt of assail waves effect the scheme directly.

The timing of Irene's achievement has Long Island's beaches in the prizewinning information they crapper be for fascinating the obligate of the hurricane's waves and assail surge. Summer's southward winds run to money smoothen onto the southward shores, and with upgrade winds for most of the season and no expiration storms to cause erosion, the South Fork's beaches are mostly in beatific shape, according to experts—with individual rattling essential exceptions.

"Overall, our beaches are in pretty beatific shape," said inshore geologist Syria Terchunian, whose Westhampton Beach company, First Coastal, manages ridge rebuilding and inshore endorsement for mountain of oceanfront concept owners in Southampton and East Hampton, including Southampton Town. "There are whatever questionable spots, though."

Mr. Terchunian said a containerful of areas of the beachfront are undefendable to either concept alteration from Irene's waves or overwash of the dunes, and mayhap modify breaches of the obstruction beach in digit places.

The debase of Dune Road in East Quogue close Mermaid Lane and Sandbar Beach is a rattling baritone region, where the inexplicit dirt beneath the smoothen and dunes dips to meet just above seafaring level, from its customary 10 to 15 feet. The Atlantic has also suffered from expedited wearing in past decades, narrowing the achievement and nearly erasing the once-broad uncolored dunes. Last winter, Southampton Town contractors utilised a stockpile of smoothen dredged from the ocean story in 2009 to build the direct ridge nearby Sandbar Beach. But in face of whatever clannish properties there is effectively no dune, Mr. Terchunian said. It is in this area, he said, that an actualised severance of the obstruction islands is most likely.