"MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. - Traffic streamed inland from the vulnerable Outer Banks on Wednesday as thousands of residents and visitors alike headed for higher ground ahead of approaching Hurricane Isabel. Thousands more were ordered to evacuate in Virginia.

By midday Wednesday, more than 200,000 people in North Carolina and Virginia had been told to evacuate, with orders stretching beyond the coast into low-lying inland areas and islands deep inside Chesapeake Bay.

Forecasters predicted little change in strength before Isabel, the biggest storm to hit the region since Hurricane Floyd in 1999, makes landfall sometime Thursday morning along the Outer Banks, the thin, 120-mile-long chain of islands."