[Source: Reuters]

Hurricane Lee barreled across the North Atlantic toward New England and Eastern Canada on Friday.

Threatening to bring drenching rains, powerful winds and a life-threatening storm surge to the region over the weekend.

Lee is expected to weaken into a strong tropical storm before making landfall in southwestern Nova Scotia as a strong tropical storm on Saturday afternoon, the Canadian Hurricane Center said.

Even so, the storm has the potential to dump as much as 4 inches (10 cm) of rain and produce winds of up to 60 mph (97 kph) in some spots, prompting U.S. and Canadian officials to urge people to prepare for possible flooding and power outages.

Tropical Storm conditions were expected in southeastern New England on Friday night, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center, which issued a tropical storm warning for hundreds of miles of coastline from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, affecting some 9 million people.

“Please plan ahead to stay indoors if possible on Saturday and check on your loved ones and neighbors,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a statement to the city of 650,000 people.

Lee has been churning a large hurricane over the Atlantic for more than a week, briefly threatening Bermuda but mostly harmless for anyone on land

But by Friday afternoon it was packing sustained winds of close to 80 mph (130 kph) and “Lee is expected to be a very large and dangerous storm when it reaches eastern New England and Atlantic Canada,” the National Weather Service said.

Some spots, such as Cape Cod in Massachusetts and eastern Halifax County in Nova Scotia, may be in for a storm surge of up to 3 feet (91 cm), forecasters said.

As of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Friday, the storm was about 290 miles (465 km) southeast of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket as it moved north at about 20 mph (31 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. It was expected to pick up speed and weaken through the day, the weather service said.

Lee is the latest storm in what is proving to be a busy hurricane season that has featured a higher-than-average number of named storms.

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