Hurricane Matthew had some people edgy.

Joseph DeCenzo at Pleasure Marina in Oakland Beach couldn’t help but notice it. While the boating season is drawing to a close and winter hauling has started, he’s been getting calls from people who would like to step up the process and get their boat out of the water just in case the hurricane that pummeled Haiti and Cuba with 140 mph winds and a drenching 24 inches of rain finds its way to Rhode Island.

David Graves, spokesman for National Grid, sensed the anxiety, too. He said Tuesday the company started to line up contractors that would clear downed limbs and trees, as well as notified its own personnel that vacations and days off are temporally cancelled. He said the company is also confirming staging areas such as Twin River and the Knight Campus of CCRI, where materials like transformers and wiring can be stockpiled in the event of extensive damage and prolonged power outages.

“The drumbeat begins,” Peter Gaynor, director of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, said Tuesday. Twenty-four hours later, with revised forecasts suggesting Rhode Island would see little more than rain this weekend, he was feeling better but keeping a watchful eye.

“You never say never,” he said. “If it holds true, it’s really good for us; it’s a positive turn.” He noted, however, that doesn’t look to be the case for Florida and South Carolina.

Gaynor said RIEMA was making internal preparations, including the gassing of vehicles and testing of communications. Other considerations are the scheduled arrival of cruise ships in Newport and the closure of state parks. Gaynor said his role would be to inform agencies and companies such as the cruise ship lines of storm precautions so that they can decide what to do.

“It’s so they can make good decisions for themselves,” he said.

Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena was playing it safe. He said Wednesday that generators were being tested, vehicles gassed, and trucks being outfitted with pumps and sand bags.

“We’re as ready as we can be. If it comes, we’re going to be ready for it,” he said.

Rhode Island native and hydrologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service’s Northeast River Forecast Center, David Vallee, said Wednesday Matthew’s “steering currents are very very weak.”

“We knew a week ago when this system was beginning to get its act together it would get to this place in the southern Bahamas where all bets are off. The steering currents were five to 10 days out and very ill defined. What happens then to those models is that they become very sensitive to other atmospheric players that are going to drive the evolution of one of those other weather features,” he said.

Vallee offered an extended evaluation of the systems affecting the storm and its path that underscored the complexity of forecasting even using today’s computers and modeling.

“Now we’re at a point here in the Northeast where it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful weekend for the Scituate Art Festival. But it’s always about the timing. Impacts right now would be squat. Nothing. The only thing we’ll have to look for is, does some of that deep moisture, the storm’s moisture plumes, does any of that get shot up the East Coast. But at this point it looks like the answer is no,” he said.