From Staff and Wire Reports

Tropical Storm Cristobal is expected to have little impact on Virginia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said this evening.

"It's too far south to have an effect in Virginia," said Mike Rusnak with the weather service's Wakefield office.

Even rain in Virginia as a result of the storm will be minimal, he said. The worst of the storm will be overnight tonight and the weather is expected to clear by morning as Cristobal moves farther away, Rusnak said.

The storm skirted the North Carolina coast today, dumping heavy rain and churning up rough surf, but so far sparing the seaboard of any severe weather.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for north of Surf City to the Virginia-North Carolina line.

Maximum sustained winds were near 50 mph with higher gusts, with little change in strength expected.

Meteorologist Rich Bandy at the National Weather Service said the strong winds were on the eastern side of the storm, away from land.

"The only wind impacts are going to be on the immediate coast from Cape Lookout (N.C.) up to Oregon Inlet and that should be the worst of it," Bandy said. The storm was expected to start pulling away from its coastline track about midnight after it passed Cape Hatteras, Bandy said.

Rainfall was expected to be 1 to 2 inches with isolated amounts of 4 to 5 inches in areas where heavy rain bands passed overhead, he said.

Tony Spencer, chief of emergency management in Hyde County, N.C., which includes Ocracoke, urged beachgoers to stay out of the ocean today because of the danger of rip currents.

Cristobal was expected to push tides 2 to 3 feet above normal. The National Weather Service said a few areas could see flooding from heavy rain.

-- Times-Dispatch staff writer Juan Antonio Lizama and The Associated Press contributed to this report.