cnn is your hurricane headquarters, this video if our ireporters, mark rosetta, shot on the south side of st. maarten as earl approached earlier in the week. a powerful storm of category four is closing in on the coast of north carolina. that's the kind of thing you can expect. look at the waves right now. it looks very calm out on coastal north carolina right now. but reynolds is going to explain to us why this is, is such a serious storm. there's something about this, reynolds, i'm no expert, no meteorologist, but i've seen many and they don't look as tight or as organized. this thing is compact. does that matter? >> what's interesting about this is you've got a center of circulation, but if you look at the outflow, it's a fairly large storm. and when you take a look at it, this is a satellite image that