Irene, the most powerful storm so far in the annual Atlantic hurricane season, took aim at the Carolinas as people in New York and Washington DC braced for the storm to hit this weekend.
The benchmark November frozen concentrated orange juice futures added 0.65 cent to end at $1.614 per lb, moving from $1.5855 to $1.615.
The market is down by 1.68 percent this week.
The level of investor interest dropped to its lowest level since March 31 as open interest slid to 24,596 lots as of Aug. 25, ICE Futures US data reported.
Volume traded was over 1,800 lots at 1:42 p.m. EDT (1742 GMT), about a third under the 30-day norm, Thomson Reuters data showed.
"We're looking for another storm to trade on," said The Price Group analyst Jack Scoville.
He said the trade is looking at tropical depression 10 out in the Atlantic ocean, but the disturbance is too far away to matter for juice market players.
The peak period when storms would threaten Florida, the biggest citrus growing state in the country, normally runs through the middle of October.
A storm hitting the central-southern Florida citrus belt could cut estimates for Florida's 2011/12 citrus crop.
Influential private forecaster Elizabeth Steger was said to have pegged Florida's 2011/12 citrus crop at 142 million (90-lb) boxes, at the lower end of trade expectations it would come in from 140 to 150 million boxes.
Louis Dreyfus pegged the crop at 146 million boxes. In 2010/11, the Florida crop stood at 140 million boxes.
Volume traded Thursday in the juice market hit 2,651 lots, ICE Futures US data showed.
Copyright Reuters, 2011