Besides NBC's deployment of correspondents along the East Coast, NBC partner The Weather Channel is there as well with periodic updates. Below are video clips that will be updated throughout Earl's odyssey:

Outer Banks, N.C.
Ocean City, Md.
Montauk, N.Y.
Chatham, Mass.

By Patrick Rizzo, msnbc.com
Images as Hurricane Earl races toward the Eastern seaboard of the United States: Thousands of tourists fleeing Cape Hatteras; a local hotel with a sign that says “Earl you are not welcome here”; and homeowners along the coast battening down the hatches.

But there’s one group that is excited for the storm’s approach, as the New York Times noted today: East Coast surfers, who are accustomed to envying their peers in places with larger waves, such as California or Hawaii.

Hurricane season is one of the rare times when East Coast waves can reach world-class heights.

As of Thursday morning, Earl, a Category 4 storm, was packing winds at around 145 miles per hour. The storm is located about 410 miles south of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and is moving north-northwest near 18 mph, on a path that seemed certain to delight surfers from Florida to New England.

While watches and warnings were posted along the Atlantic coast for most of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and part of Massachusetts, surf cams on websites such as Surfline.com show top breaks along the coast packed with surfers enjoying the larger-than-usual waves.

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

We’re used to finding out about earthquakes through tweets in some variation of “OMG! Just felt an earthquake!” Today, Twitter also proved its ability to effectively deliver updates during an ongoing hostage situation in Silver Springs. Md.

As a gunman who reportedly had explosives strapped to himself held people hostage in the Discovery TV building, the six degrees of separation from the 1,900 employees who work there became apparent as panicked people tweeted their concern for friends, cousins, aunts, and acquaintances employed by Discovery. Most followed up with tweets of relief when they heard their loved ones were OK- and tweets from employees themselves who got out safely. “Everyone I’m ok – please pray for my co worker,” tweeted @BmoreFab.

“#Discovery” quickly became a trending hashtag on Twitter, and news junkies and e-detectives wasted no time digging up information on the suspect, James Jay Lee, once media outlets released his name. @yurivictor tweeted a link to a cached webpage Lee apparently created two years ago, which referenced another Discovery protest he organized in February 2008; his MySpace page was passed around, along with YouTube videos allegedly showing footage of him and blog posts he wrote.

'If Twitter were around during Katrina'
People near the Discovery building became reporters in 140-character-update form. From her office on the 10th floor in Silver Spring, @DCDebbie tweeted around 2 p.m. ET: “Just now hearing of hostage situation at Discovery channel headquarters, I'm 2 blocks away... Will investigate,” she tweeted around 2 p.m. ET.

“Downtown silver spring is evacuated, Discovery employees huddled on nearby corner crying,” she tweeted a few minutes later to an audience that would grow by the thousands throughout her afternoon of on-the-scene live-tweeting.

“Hundreds of people are replying back, saying they’re hearing more from what I’m tweeting than from other news sources,” Debbie, who asked that her last name not be printed while the situation was ongoing, told msnbc.com. “I’m warning my friends [in the area] who are warning their friends.”

She was “very, very concerned” by the situation, but remained devoted to delivering news as it happened. “People are hearing it from me first,” she told msnbc.com. “You have to wonder what would have happened if Twitter were around during Katrina.”