A video conference call with meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Upton, NY, Thursday  afternoon told town officials what they hoped to learn: Hurricane Earl is likely to remain far enough east in the Atlantic to have little impact on Ridgefield.

"It looks like we've dodged a bullet," said First Selectman Rudy Marconi to the circle of department heads around him in the town's Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

 "One-half to 1.5 inches of rain; sustained winds to 30 knots (34.5 miles per hour)," said Dick Aarons, deputy director of Ridgefield Emergency Management, summarizing what he heard during the call. "But," he noted, "there's still a 50 mile chance of error (east to west)."

Weather  service officials also advised Earl will be moving northward past Long Island from Friday evening to Saturday morning, and  said it should  have little tidal effects along Connecticut's Long Island Sound shoreline.

Based on the information obtained during the conference, Marconi said senior town officials would only be called back to the EOC for a meeting Friday if Earl took a threatening turn west over the next 24 hours.

Marconi also said he'd cancelled  his vacation to Cape Cod, MA, this weekend. A projected plot of Earl Thursday afternoon showed it was targeted for the  east end of the Cape.

Participants at the meeting included the town's account executive from Connecticut Light & Power, James V. Kalamajka, who handed out a copy of the company's 96-hour Emergency Preparedness Plan, which is put into effect before major storms.

To begin with, Kalamajka said, the company has cancelled all vacations, including his.

Kalamajka said CL&P has 250 line crews in Connecticut, including about 15 crews dispatched out of its Newtown regional office, which includes Ridgefield.

In a discussion about how to improve the town's response  to an emergency, Fire Chief Heather L. Burford told Kalamajka it would help if the company provided realistic time frames of when power will be restored to an area.

"We're preparing the community (for an emergency)," Burford said, "so if we could get that  information from your war room, that would really help."

At 11 p.m., the National Weather Service said a tropical storm warning was in effect as far north along the Atlantic coast as Massachusetts, from North of the Hull to the Merrimack River, and  for the coast of Maine from Stonington to Eastport.

Also, Environment Canada has expanded its tropical storm watch to include Prince Edward Island and a portion of the coast of Nova  Scotia.