BAD WEEKEND WITH IRENE ONE DANGEROUS EXTREMIST STORM

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

THE FIRST JUDGEMENT OF THE EARTH STARTED WITH WATER-IT ONLY MAKES SENSE THE LAST GENERATION WILL BE HAVING FLOODING
GENESIS 7:6-12
6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
GOD PROMISED BY A RAINBOW-THE EARTH WOULD NEVER BE DESTROYED TOTALLY WITH A FLOOD AGAIN.BUT FLOODIING IS A SIGN OF JUDGEMENT.

Irene lashing Va coast with hurricane winds, rain
AP By MITCH WEISS and SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press – 10:00PM AUG 27,11

NAGS HEAD, N.C. – Still menacing Hurricane Irene knocked out power and piers in North Carolina, clobbered Virginia with wind and churned up the coast Saturday to confront cities more accustomed to snowstorms than tropical storms. New York City emptied its streets and subways and waited with an eerie quiet.With most of its transportation machinery shut down, the Eastern Seaboard spent the day nervously watching the storm's march across a swath of the nation inhabited by 65 million people. The hurricane had an enormous wingspan — 500 miles, its outer reaches stretching from the Carolinas to Cape Cod — and packed wind gusts of 115 mph.At least 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power. While it was too early to assess the full threat, Irene was blamed for six deaths.The hurricane stirred up 7-foot waves, and forecasters warned of storm-surge danger on the coasts of Virginia and Delaware, along the Jersey Shore and in New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. In the Northeast, drenched by rain this summer, the ground is already saturated, raising the risk of flooding.Irene made its official landfall just after first light near Cape Lookout, N.C., at the southern end of the Outer Banks, the ribbon of land that bows out into the Atlantic Ocean. Shorefront hotels and houses were lashed with waves. Two piers were destroyed, and at least one hospital was forced to run on generator power.Things are banging against the house, Leon Reasor said as he rode out the storm in the town of Buxton. I hope it doesn't get worse, but I know it will. I just hate hurricanes.By late evening, the storm had sustained winds of 80 mph, down from 100 mph on Friday. That made it a Category 1, the least threatening on a 1-to-5 scale, and barely stronger than a tropical storm. Its center passed North Carolina and was moving along the coast of Virginia. It also was picking up speed, moving at 16 mph.After the Outer Banks, the storm strafed Virginia with rain and strong wind. Hurricane force winds covered the Hampton Roads region, which is thick with inlets and rivers and floods easily, and chugged north toward Chesapeake Bay.

Maryland transportation officials closed the Chesapeake Bay bridge when wind gusts reached 82 mph. The bridge connects the capital of Annapolis and the rest of Maryland to the Eastern Shore. A tornado touched down in Sussex County in Delaware, damaging at least 15 homes.Shaped like a massive inverted comma, the storm had a thick northern flank that covered all of Delaware, almost all of Maryland and the eastern half of Virginia.The deaths included two children, an 11-year-old boy in Virginia killed when a tree crashed through his roof and a North Carolina child who died in a crash at an intersection where traffic lights were out.In addition, a North Carolina man was killed by a flying tree limb, a passenger died when a tree fell on in a car in Virginia, and a surfer in Florida was killed in heavy waves.It was the first hurricane to make landfall in the continental United States since 2008, and came almost six years to the day after Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Experts guessed that no other hurricane in American history had threatened as many people.At least 2.3 million were under orders to move to somewhere safer, although it was unclear how many obeyed or, in some cases, how they could.Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 6,500 troops from all branches of the military to get ready to pitch in on relief work, and President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's command center in Washington and offered moral support.It's going to be a long 72 hours, he said,and obviously a lot of families are going to be affected.In New York, authorities began the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt. The subway began shutting down at noon, the first time the system was closed because of a natural disaster. It was expected to take as long as eight hours for all the trains to complete their runs and be taken out of service.On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates near the East River because of fear of flooding. Tarps were placed over other grates. Construction stopped throughout the city, and workers at the site of the World Trade Center dismantled a crane and secured equipment.While there were plenty of cabs on the street, the city was far quieter than on an average Saturday. In some of the busiest parts of Manhattan, it was possible to cross a major avenue without looking, and the waters of New York Harbor, which might normally be churning from boat traffic, were quiet before the storm.

The biggest utility, Consolidated Edison, considered cutting off power to 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan because it would make the eventual repairs easier. Mayor Michael Bloomberg also warned New Yorkers that elevators in public housing would be shut down, and elevators in some high-rises would quit working so people don't get trapped if the power goes out.The time to leave is right now, Bloomberg said at an outdoor news conference at Coney Island, his shirt soaked from rain.A day earlier, the city ordered evacuations for low-lying areas, including Battery Park City at the southern edge of Manhattan, Coney Island with its famous amusement park and the beachfront Rockaways in Queens.The five main New York-area airports — La Guardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark, plus two smaller ones — waved in their last arriving flights around noon. The Giants and Jets postponed their preseason NFL game, the Mets postponed two baseball games, and Broadway theaters were dark.New York has seen only a handful of hurricanes in the past 200 years. The Northeast is much more used to snowstorms — including the blizzard last December, when Bloomberg was criticized for a slow response.For all the concern, there were early signs that the storm might not be as bad as feared. Some forecasts had it making landfall as a Category 3 storm and perhaps reaching New York as a Category 2.Isabel got 10 inches from coming in the house, and this one ain't no Isabel, said Chuck Owen of Poquoson, Va., who has never abandoned his house to heed an evacuation order. He was referring to Hurricane Isabel, which chugged through in 2003.Still, Owen put his pickup truck on a small pyramid of cinder blocks to protect it from the storm tide, which had already begun surging through the saltwater marshes that stand between Poquoson and Chesapeake Bay.Airlines said 9,000 flights were canceled, including 3,000 on Saturday. Airlines declined to say how many passengers would be affected, but it could easily be millions because so many flights make connections on the East Coast. There were more than 10,000 cancellations during the blizzard last winter.American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said it was not clear when flights would resume out of New York.The one thing about a hurricane is that you can prepare for it and you just have to adapt your plan based on how the storm travels, she said.It's basically an educated guessing game.Greyhound suspended bus service between Richmond, Va., and Boston. Amtrak canceled trains in the Northeast for Sunday.The power losses covered at least 1.5 million homes and businesses and were heavily concentrated in Virginia and North Carolina. Dominion Resources reported almost 800,000 customers without power in Virginia. In North Carolina, about 600,000 customers had no power with many of the outages in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C. Nearly 55,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey are without power.
Irene roared across the Caribbean earlier this week, offering a devastating preview for the United States: power outages, dangerous floods and high winds that caused millions of dollars in damage.Samantha Gross reported from New York. Associated Press writers contributing to this report were Tim Reynolds and Christine Armario in Miami; Bruce Shipkowski in Surf City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Eric Tucker in Washington; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.; Jessica Gresko in Ocean City, Md.; Mitch Weiss in Nags Head, N.C.; Alex Dominguez in Baltimore; Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Samantha Bomkamp and Jonathan Fahey in New York; and Seth Borenstein in Washington.

Irene another test of capital's disaster prep
AP By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press – 9:35PM AUG 27,11

WASHINGTON – Already bruised by an earthquake that damaged two of its iconic structures, the nation's capital was watching and waiting Saturday for its first hurricane in more than a half-century, a storm that could test its ability to protect both national treasures and vulnerable residents.The worst of Hurricane Irene was supposed to hit Washington late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Forecasts called for several inches of rain, wind gusts of up to 60 mph and possible flash flooding. The expectation led organizers to postpone the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall that was expected to draw up to 250,000 people.But beyond the tourist mecca of the Mall, the District of Columbia is a diverse city of 600,000 with a stark divide between the wealth of Northwest and the poverty of Southeast. And in the impoverished neighborhood of Anacostia, many weren't prepared for the storm — and weren't assured that the district government would do much to help them.The district is constantly on guard against terrorist attacks, but some residents say it remains ill-prepared for disasters. People leaving the city after this week's 5.8-magnitude earthquake — which caused cracks in the Washington Monument and millions of dollars in damage to the National Cathedral — snarled traffic for hours.

I don't think Washington is equipped for a big storm or evacuation or anything like that, Melvin Holloway, 61, a retired District of Columbia water department employee, said as he sipped from a can of Bud Light outside a convenience store Saturday morning. There's just no communication.Flooding is one problem. City leaders last fall recognized that the National Mall along the Potomac River was vulnerable during a massive storm and started a project to upgrade the system of levees along the river. Construction has started but will take several years to complete.Built on the banks of the Potomac on swampy ground, Washington has always been under threat of river flooding from a major storm. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers review after 2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina concluded the city's flood-control system — built some 70 years ago — was inadequate.A map of potential flooding by the Federal Emergency Management Agency said museums such as the National Gallery of Art and federal buildings like the Commerce Department could be under as much as 10 feet of water if the current flood-control measures failed. That triggered planning for a better system.This week, the city struggled to distribute sandbags, with hundreds of cars lining up for up to two hours to collect them. By about 3 p.m., the city had nearly run out. It gave away about 13,000 bags over two days to a cross-section of the population. Many were homeowners looking to protect their basements.

They should have done it earlier, State Department employee Tina Harris, 36, said as she snaked toward the front of the line in her minivan early Saturday afternoon following a wait of about an hour and a half.At the same time, Harris, who lives in the Northeast quadrant of the city, which is not as vulnerable to flooding, said it was unrealistic for Washington to prepare adequately for a hurricane.We haven't had one before. We're not used to it,she said.The last named storm to cause damage in Washington was Isabel, which had weakened to a tropical storm when it hit in 2003. The last hurricane to hit was Hazel in 1954.As for where people live, despite being built on two rivers, the district has relatively little waterfront housing, although certain neighborhoods, including wealthy Georgetown and the Southwest Waterfront, are susceptible to flooding. The waterfront has mixed demographics, but there are public housing complexes and lower-income neighborhoods near the water.The district will be keeping its homeless shelters open for the duration of the storm, and had also set aside four places for displaced residents. By Saturday evening, those temporary shelters had yet to open.The poorer sections of the city are always a worry, said Councilmember Marion Barry, the former four-term mayor. He represents Ward 8 — the poorest of the city's wards — and said his constituents were accustomed to bearing the brunt of bad weather and other adversity.

Whenever there's an outage, we're going to be the first, Barry said. We're the first, and we get hit the hardest.Homes in Ward 8, however, are unlikely to be flooded by a surging Anacostia River, because the riverfront is occupied by a park and by Bolling Air Force Base.Much of official Washington has considered the possibility of a once-in-a-generation storm.For example, the monuments along the Tidal Basin — including the Jefferson Memorial and the new King Memorial — are designed to withstand flooding, said Bill Line, a National Park Service spokesman.
Line said he did not believe the Tidal Basin — a manmade inlet off the Potomac River walled off by a stone embankment — had ever overflowed its banks, although he conceded it was possible in an incredible storm surge. Much of the National Mall was created by a massive Army Corps of Engineers dredging project more than a century ago that altered the path of the Potomac River. There was not damage by Saturday night.The National Archives installed self-rising walls to protect the building after severe flooding in the basement damaged a newly opened theater, said spokeswoman Susan Cooper. The walls have worked in past storms, she said. The building doesn't keep its precious documents in the basement.Pepco, the utility serving the district and its Maryland suburbs, warned customers that Irene could bring destruction and that restoring service could take several days.Millicent West, the city's homeland security director, said officials from several agencies would be making the rounds in poor neighborhoods to make sure residents weren't neglected. Mayor Vincent Gray said that given forecasts showing the storm moving out by Sunday afternoon, he did not anticipate vulnerable residents being isolated for days in dangerous conditions.We hope that the duration of this will be relatively short, which means that people can get back out and get engaged in the normal patterns of life,Gray said.Ward 8 has a 25 percent unemployment rate and a 35 percent poverty rate. In Anacostia, some residents were making do with what they had, which wasn't much.I'm just about as ready as I can get, said Patricia Williams, a resident of Barry Farm, a sprawling, rundown public housing complex.I don't have no money to stock up on water and food.Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.Follow Ben Nuckols on Twitter at http://twitter.com/APBenNuckols

History of Hurricanes in New York City ContributorNetwork William Browning – Sat Aug 27, 1:18 pm ET

New York City is getting ready for a monster storm. The entire network of its famed subway system will be shut down in anticipation of Hurricane Irene. Parts of the city will be evacuated in low-lying areas to ensure elderly residents will be safe in case flooding occurs.In terms of hurricane preparedness, New York City isn't exactly on the cutting edge. However, because it is the largest city in the United States there must be precautions taken to guard its most vulnerable citizens. Perhaps the lessons learned from past New York City hurricane strikes have served as a lesson to current leaders.

1821 Hurricane

Hurricanes didn't get names until 1950. Back in early September 1821, a gigantic storm bore down on New York so fast it caught residents of the city unaware. Walls of water 13 feet high brought high water south of Canal Street. New York Magazine reported the only thing that saved the city from complete ruin was that the brunt of the storm surge came in at low tide.There were an unspecified number of deaths as records in 1821 were scarce. However, the areas decimated by the 1821 Hurricane were far less populated than they are today so the loss of life was kept relatively low by today's standards.

Hog Island Destroyed, 1893

An estimated Category 2 hurricane hit the area in 1893. The storm completely washed away Hog's Island, a resort part of New York City Aug. 22, 1893. No one in the modern age of New York had seen anything like it. Hog's Island was a mile long. A 30-foot storm surge of water completely washed it away literally overnight.The site where the hurricane made a direct hit is where JFK International Airport now sits. Should Hurricane Irene pack the same punch as the storm in 1893, imagine what might happen. Howling winds and heavy rain may not do well in low-lying areas of New York.

Long Island Express, 1938

The hurricane dubbed the Long Island Express hit eastern Long Island as a Category 3 hurricane on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 1938. It spared New York City for the most part as the strongest 180 mph winds stayed in sparsely populated areas of Long Island. The storm killed 10 people in New York City alone and 200 overall. Had the hurricane moved 75 miles farther west, New York City would have taken a direct hit.
Insurance adjusters are fearful of another hit like the Long Island Express. Now, a storm of that magnitude would cause damage over $10 billion. Other modern hurricanes have dumped lots of rain and wind on New York. Hurricane Belle grazed New York in August of 1976 causing heavy rain. Hurricane Gloria also pelted the region with monsoon rains in late September of 1985.As Hurricane Irene approaches, New York is doing what many residents in hurricane-prone areas do. They are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.William Browning is a research librarian.Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor.

Irene churns up coast, weaker but still ferocious AP By MITCH WEISS and SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press – AUG 27,11 5:30PM

NAGS HEAD, N.C. – Weaker but still menacing, Hurricane Irene knocked out power and piers in North Carolina, clobbered Virginia with wind and churned up the coast Saturday to confront cities more accustomed to snowstorms than tropical storms. New York City emptied its streets and subways and waited with an eerie quiet.With most of its transportation machinery shut down, the Eastern Seaboard spent the day nervously watching the storm's march across a swath of the nation inhabited by 65 million people. The hurricane had an enormous wingspan — 500 miles, its outer reaches stretching from the Carolinas to Cape Cod — and packed wind gusts of 115 mph.

Almost 900,000 homes and businesses were without power. While it was too early to assess the full threat, Irene was blamed for three deaths. A North Carolina man was struck by a flying tree limb, someone in Virginia was killed when a tree fell on a car, and an 11-year-old boy in Virginia died when a tree crashed through his apartment building.The hurricane stirred up 7-foot waves, and forecasters warned of storm-surge danger on the coasts of Virginia and Delaware, along the Jersey Shore and in New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. In the Northeast, drenched by rain this summer, the ground is already saturated, raising the risk of flooding.Irene made its official landfall just after first light near Cape Lookout, N.C., at the southern end of the Outer Banks, the ribbon of land that bows out into the Atlantic Ocean. Shorefront hotels and houses were lashed with waves. Two piers were destroyed, and at least one hospital was forced to run on generator power.Things are banging against the house, Leon Reasor said as he rode out the storm in the town of Buxton. I hope it doesn't get worse, but I know it will. I just hate hurricanes.By afternoon, the storm had weakened to sustained winds of 80 mph, down from 100 mph on Friday. That made it a Category 1, the least threatening on a 1-to-5 scale, and barely stronger than a tropical storm. Its center was positioned almost exactly where North Carolina meets Virginia at the Atlantic, and it was moving more slowly, at 13 mph, and back out toward the ocean.After the Outer Banks, the storm strafed Virginia with rain and strong wind. It covered the Hampton Roads region, which is thick with inlets and rivers and floods easily, and chugged north toward Chesapeake Bay. Shaped like a massive inverted comma, the storm had a thick northern flank that covered all of Delaware, almost all of Maryland and the eastern half of Virginia.

It was the first hurricane to make landfall in the continental United States since 2008, and came almost six years to the day after Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Experts guessed that no other hurricane in American history had threatened as many people.At least 2.3 million were under orders to move to somewhere safer, although it was unclear how many obeyed or, in some cases, how they could.Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 6,500 troops from all branches of the military to get ready to pitch in on relief work, and President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's command center in Washington and offered moral support.It's going to be a long 72 hours,he said, and obviously a lot of families are going to be affected.In New York, authorities began the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt. The subway began shutting down at noon, the first time the system was closed because of a natural disaster. It was expected to take as long as eight hours for all the trains to complete their runs and be taken out of service.On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates near the East River because of fear of flooding. Tarps were placed over other grates. Construction stopped throughout the city, and workers at the site of the World Trade Center dismantled a crane and secured equipment.While there were plenty of cabs on the street, the city was far quieter than on an average Saturday. In some of the busiest parts of Manhattan, it was possible to cross a major avenue without looking, and the waters of New York Harbor, which might normally be churning from boat traffic, were quiet before the storm.The biggest utility, Consolidated Edison, considered cutting off power to 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan because it would make the eventual repairs easier. Mayor Michael Bloomberg also warned New Yorkers that elevators in public housing would be shut down, and elevators in some high-rises would quit working so people don't get trapped if the power goes out.The time to leave is right now, Bloomberg said at an outdoor news conference at Coney Island, his shirt soaked from rain.A day earlier, the city ordered evacuations for low-lying areas, including Battery Park City at the southern edge of Manhattan, Coney Island with its famous amusement park and the beachfront Rockaways in Queens.The five main New York-area airports — La Guardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark, plus two smaller ones — waved in their last arriving flights around noon. The Giants and Jets postponed their preseason NFL game, the Mets postponed two baseball games, and Broadway theaters were dark.

New York has seen only a handful of hurricanes in the past 200 years. The Northeast is much more used to snowstorms — including the blizzard last December, when Bloomberg was criticized for a slow response.For all the concern, there were early signs that the storm might not be as bad as feared. Some forecasts had it making landfall as a Category 3 storm and perhaps reaching New York as a Category 2.Isabel got 10 inches from coming in the house, and this one ain't no Isabel, said Chuck Owen of Poquoson, Va., who has never abandoned his house to heed an evacuation order. He was referring to Hurricane Isabel, which chugged through in 2003.Still, Owen put his pickup truck on a small pyramid of cinder blocks to protect it from the storm tide, which had already begun surging through the saltwater marshes that stand between Poquoson and Chesapeake Bay.Airlines said 9,000 flights were canceled, including 3,000 on Saturday. Airlines declined to say how many passengers would be affected, but it could easily be millions because so many flights make connections on the East Coast. There were more than 10,000 cancellations during the blizzard last winter.American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said it was not clear when flights would resume out of New York.The one thing about a hurricane is that you can prepare for it and you just have to adapt your plan based on how the storm travels, she said. It's basically an educated guessing game.Greyhound suspended bus service between Richmond, Va., and Boston. Amtrak canceled trains in the Northeast for Sunday.The power losses were heavily concentrated in Virginia and North Carolina, where Irene charged ashore early Saturday morning. Dominion Resources reported almost 600,000 customers without power and Progress Energy 260,000, with much of the outages in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C.Irene roared across the Caribbean earlier this week, offering a devastating preview for the United States: power outages, dangerous floods and high winds that caused millions of dollars in damage.
Samantha Gross reported from New York. Associated Press writers contributing to this report were Tim Reynolds and Christine Armario in Miami; Bruce Shipkowski in Surf City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Eric Tucker in Washington; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.; Jessica Gresko in Ocean City, Md.; Mitch Weiss in Nags Head, N.C.; Alex Dominguez in Baltimore; Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Samantha Bomkamp and Jonathan Fahey in New York; and Seth Borenstein in Washington.

Storm surge may force power cut to south New York City Reuters By Jeanine Prezioso and David Sheppard – AUG 27,11 5:40PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Utility Consolidated Edison said it does not plan a widespread shutdown of New York City's power ahead of Hurricane Irene, although it may impose precautionary power cuts early on Sunday in low-lying areas of downtown Manhattan, where flooding threats are higher.A spokesman for New York's largest utility said around 6,000 customers south of the Brooklyn Bridge were most likely to be affected if the category 1 hurricane brings a serious storm surge.The decision will be made between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. EDT (0600-1400 GMT) on Sunday, the company said, based on the likely storm surge and the time the storm eventually hits the United States' most densely populated city.ConEd will shut down 10 miles of steam generation lines out of about 110 miles affecting about 50 customers, John Miksad, senior vice president of electric operations, said during a conference call.ConEd is expecting an additional 400 to 450 crew members to come in from across the country to assist with the storm response.The utility said the storm does not pose a major threat to the gas system.(Reporting by Jeanine Prezioso and David Sheppard; editing by Vicki Allen)

POWER OUTAGE

REVELATION 16:10-11
10 And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain,
11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

Irene knocks out power to nearly 200,000 homes
AP By CHRIS KAHN - AP Energy Writer | AP – AUG 27,11 11:25AM

Nearly 200,000 homes in North Carolina are without power as Hurricane Irene slams into the state.Winds of up to 80 miles per hour whipped ashore Saturday morning, ripping power lines from poles and snapping trees in half.Hardest hit were Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C., where Progress Energy reports 190,000 customers without power. Most of those customers are residences.We expect those numbers to increase, Progress spokeswoman Julia Milstead said.Duke Energy also reports about 2,300 customers without power, mostly in Durham, N.C. SCE&G, which serves most of South Carolina, says it restored power to 2,500 customers last night.

Power companies have called in several hundred workers from surrounding states to tend to the disaster. Crews are rushing out between bands in the hurricane, when the wind and rain eases. They're looking for the worst damage first at towering transmission lines where an outage could put an entire county in the dark.Much more damage is expected as Irene travels up the Eastern Seaboard.An unusually large number of people may be affected by Irene. That's because it is forecast to stay just offshore_and thus retain much of its power_as it inches up the coast from North Carolina to New England. When a hurricane hits land, it quickly loses steam.The entire Eastern Seaboard lies in the storm's projected path, with flooding and damage from winds likely. North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island have declared emergencies. New York City issued evacuation orders for people in low-lying areas.

Irene, a bit weaker, begins its destructive run AP By MICHAEL BIESECKER and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press – AUG 27,11

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. – Hurricane Irene opened its assault on the Eastern Seaboard on Saturday by lashing the North Carolina coast with wind topping 90 mph and pounding shoreline homes with waves. Farther north, authorities readied a massive shutdown of trains and airports, with 2 million people ordered out of the way.The center of the storm passed over North Carolina's Outer Banks for its official landfall just after 7:30 a.m. EDT. The hurricane's vast reach traced the East Coast from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to just below Cape Cod.Irene weakened slightly, with sustained winds down to 85 mph from about 100 a day earlier, making it a Category 1, the least threatening on the scale. Parts of North Carolina recorded gusts as high as 94, however.Hurricane-force winds arrived near Jacksonville, N.C., at first light, and wind-whipped rain lashed the resort town of Nags Head. Tall waves covered the beach, and the surf pushed as high as the backs of some of the houses and hotels fronting the strand.At least two piers on the Outer Banks were wiped out, the roof of a car dealership was ripped away, and a hospital in Morehead City that was running on generators. In all, about 240,000 people were without power on the East Coast.I'm not taking any chances, said Susan Kinchen, who showed up at a shelter at a North Carolina high school with her daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter. She said they felt unsafe in their trailer. Kinchen, from Louisiana, said she was reminded of how Hurricane Katrina peeled the roof of her trailer there almost exactly six years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005.In the Northeast, unaccustomed to tropical weather of any strength, authorities made plans to bring the basic structures of travel grinding to a halt. The New York City subway, the largest in the United States, was making its last runs at noon, and all five area airports were accepting only a few final hours' worth of flights.

The New York transit system carries 5 million people on weekdays, fewer on weekends, and has never been shut for weather. Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down. Washington declared a state of emergency, days after it had evacuated for an earthquake.New York City ordered 300,000 people to leave low-lying areas, including the Battery Park City neighborhood at the southern tip of Manhattan, the beachfront Rockaways in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn. But it was not clear how many people would get out, or how they would do it.How can I get out of Coney Island? said Abe Feinstein, 82, who has lived for half a century on the eighth floor of a building overlooking the boardwalk.What am I going to do? Run with this walker? Authorities in New York said they would not arrest people who chose to stay, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned on Friday:If you don't follow this, people may die.In all, evacuation orders covered about 2.3 million people, including 1 million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia and 100,000 in Delaware. Authorities and experts said it was probably the most people ever threatened by a single storm in the United States.

Forecasters said the core of Irene would roll up the mid-Atlantic coast Saturday night and over southern New England on Sunday.North of the Outer Banks, the storm pounded the Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia, a jagged network of inlets and rivers that floods easily. Emergency officials there were less worried about the wind and more about storm surge, the high waves that accompany a hurricane. Gas stations there were low on fuel, and grocery stores scrambled to keep water and bread on the shelves.In Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell ordered an evacuation of coastal areas on the peninsula that the state shares with Maryland and Virginia. In Atlantic City, N.J., all 11 casinos announced they would shut down for only the third time since gambling became legal there 33 years ago.In Baltimore's Fells Point, one of the city's oldest waterfront neighborhoods, people filled sandbags and placed them at building entrances. A few miles away at the Port of Baltimore, vehicles and cranes continued to unload huge cargo ships that were rushing to offload and get away from the storm.A steady rain fell on the boardwalk at Ocean City, Md., where a small amusement park was shut down and darkened — including a ride called the Hurricane. Businesses were boarded up, many painted with messages like Irene don't be mean! Charlie Koetzle, 55, who has lived in Ocean City for a decade, came to the boardwalk in swim trunks and flip-flops to look at the sea. While his neighbors and most everyone else had evacuated, Koetzle said he told authorities he wasn't leaving. To ride out the storm, he had stocked up with soda, roast beef, peanut butter, tuna, nine packs of cigarettes and a detective novel.Of the storm, he said: I always wanted to see one.Jennifer Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writers contributing to this report were Tim Reynolds and Christine Armario in Miami; Bruce Shipkowski in Surf City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Eric Tucker in Washington; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.; Mitch Weiss in Nags Head, N.C.; Alex Dominguez in Baltimore; Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Jonathan Fahey in New York; and Seth Borenstein in Washington.

Hurricane Irene's Path: How Do Forecasters Predict the Cone of Uncertainty? Time.com By MATT PECKHAM – AUG 27,11 9:40AM

You've seen Hurricane Irene's path predicted on maps: lime green states, electric blue water and a white upside-down teardrop running smack into North Carolina. But hurricanes are fickle and go where they will, so how do weather forecasters nail them down? Actually, they don't, which is part of the problem when you're wrestling mathematically with a monster cyclone hundreds of miles in size. All forecasters can do is estimate with increasing uncertainty as they project forward through time where a hurricane might go. That's what the white teardrop - sometimes called a Cone of Uncertainty - is all about in these National Hurricane Center maps. Don't mistake it for something like Irene's area of effect, it's actually a zone representing the range of possible paths along which Hurricane Irene's eye (the relatively calm, cloudless point at a hurricane's center) could move. Think of it as a visual representation of forecasters' margin of error.How do forecasters determine the Cone of Uncertainty? According to CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen, they run simulations on some of the fastest computers in the world,which in turn crunch data assembled from radar, satellite and weather balloon scans, reports from ships in the vicinity of the hurricane, airplanes (hot-rod hunters that actually fly into the center of the storm) and weather stations.

Literally billions of calculations are done with very complex equations to help model the atmosphere into the future,Hennen says.More than 20 different kinds of models are run - some being more reliable and complex than others - to help forecast the track and intensity of the storm.Forecast tracks are issued every six hours and take into account the latest data, resulting in the multicolored spaghetti lines you sometimes see on TV, detailing the hurricane's possible paths, which in turn help to generate the Cone of Uncertainty.According to Hennen, Irene's center location 12 hours out is averaging 36 miles in either direction, while at 48 hours out, you're looking at a whopping 100 miles either way.This is why meteorologists and emergency managers will constantly preach not to look at the line on the forecast track, but to look at the cone,Hennen says. If you are inside that area, you could end up in the direct path of the storm.The site to watch: The National Hurricane Center, specifically the Coastal Watches/Warnings and 5-Day Forecast Cone for Storm Center view (or if you want the interactive Google Maps version, the Coastal Watches/Warnings and 5-Day Track Forecast Cone).Matt Peckham is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @mattpeckham or on Facebook. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME

Typhoon-triggered landslides kill 6 in Philippines
AP – AUG 27,11 8:30AM

MANILA, Philippines – A slow-moving typhoon made landfall in the Philippines on Saturday, drenching most of the north and triggering landslides that killed five children and a man digging for gold, officials said.Typhoon Nanmadol buried a hillside house before dawn, killing a 6-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother in Pangasinan province's San Fabian township, civil defense officials said.The young siblings were buried in the mud and other debris for more than two hours before rescuers recovered their bodies, said Milchito Santos, regional civil defense chief for the northwestern region of the main Philippine island of Luzon.In the northern mountain resort city of Baguio, a garbage dump's concrete wall collapsed, burying three shanties under tons of garbage and killing three siblings aged 10 to 15 who were swept about 300 yards (meters) downhill, Mayor Mauricio Domogan said.

Residents near the dump site told rescuers that several others were still buried hours later, including the children's grandmother, Domogan said.Domogan said a man who was digging for gold in the outskirts of the city was killed by mud and rocks that cascaded from a hillside.At least four other people were confirmed missing, including a fisherman from Catanduanes province, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) east of the capital, Manila, who failed to return home Thursday during stormy weather related to the typhoon, and another fisherman from La Union province, north of Manila.Two men were swept away Saturday by strong river currents in Ilocos Sur province north of La Union, officials said.Meteorologists said Nanmadol hit land near Cagayan province's Gonzaga township on the northeastern tip of Luzon around 6 a.m. Saturday (2200 GMT Friday). Its maximum winds had weakened 12 hours later to 103 mph (166 kph) with gusts of up to 124 mph (200 kph).About 200 people who evacuated a coastal village in Gonzaga because storm surges flooded their community were advised later Saturday it was safe to return home after the storm eased, said Norma Talosig, the region's civil defense director.The typhoon was moving north, toward southern Taiwan, at just 4 mph (7 kph).In Taiwan, officials warned ships passing through the Bashi Channel south of the island to stay alert.The U.S. Embassy said the visit to Manila by the U.S. Navy's John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, originally scheduled for this weekend, had been postponed because of the bad weather.

It said all tours of the aircraft carrier, as well as the reception on board, had been canceled.Domestic airlines also canceled more than a dozen flights to areas affected by the typhoon in the northern and central Philippines.Forecasters said the typhoon's cloud band was 370 miles (600 kilometers) in diameter, and that rains would continue to drench most of northern Luzon Island and generate gale-force winds that would result in rough seas in the northern and central Philippines over the weekend.Rivers in Cagayan and nearby Isabela province have swelled and the waters have flowed over at least six bridges, halting or slowing traffic in several towns, Talosig said.Civil Defense Administrator Benito Ramos reported scattered landslides in the mountainous Cordillera region and power outages in Cagayan province and nearby Isabela province.He warned of more landslides and flash floods in the Cagayan Valley region because the Cordillera mountains to the west and the Sierra Madre to the east were already saturated with rainwater.Workers were clearing landslides that blocked roads in Cordillera, including the picturesque zigzag to Baguio, officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said Nanmadol may not make landfall there but was expected to move north along the island's eastern coast Monday and Tuesday. It said the typhoon would bring torrential rains and heavy winds to Taiwan.

2 million ordered to leave as Irene takes aim AP By MICHAEL BIESECKER and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press – FRI AUG 26,11 6:30PM

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. – Whipping up trouble before ever reaching land, Hurricane Irene zeroed in Friday for a catastrophic run up the Eastern Seaboard. More than 2 million people were told to move to safer places, and New York City ordered its entire network of subways shut down for the first time because of a natural disaster.As the storm's outermost bands of wind and rain began to lash the Outer Banks of North Carolina, authorities in points farther north begged people to get out of harm's way. The hurricane lost some strength but still packed winds of almost 100 mph, and officials in the Northeast, not used to tropical weather, feared it could wreak devastation.Don't wait. Don't delay, said President Barack Obama, who decided to cut short his summer vacation by a day and return to Washington. I cannot stress this highly enough: If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now.Hurricane warnings were issued from North Carolina to New York, and watches were posted farther north, on the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard off Massachusetts. Evacuation orders covered at least 2.3 million people, including 1 million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia and 100,000 in Delaware.This is probably the largest number of people that have been threatened by a single hurricane in the United States, said Jay Baker, a geography professor at Florida State University.New York City ordered more than 300,000 people who live in flood-prone areas to leave, including Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan, Coney Island and the beachfront Rockaways. But it was not clear how many would do it, how they would get out or where they would go. Most New Yorkers don't have a car.

On top of that, the city said it would shut down the subways and buses at noon Saturday, only a few hours after the first rain is expected to fall. The transit system carries about 5 million people on an average weekday, fewer on weekends. It has been shut down several times before, including during a transit workers' strike in 2005 and after the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago, but never for weather.Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was little authorities could do to force people to leave.We do not have the manpower to go door-to-door and drag people out of their homes,he said.Nobody's going to get fined. Nobody's going to go to jail. But if you don't follow this, people may die.Shelters were opening Friday afternoon, and the city was placed under its first hurricane warning since 1985.Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down, and Washington declared a state of emergency. Boisterous New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie demanded people get the hell off the beach in Asbury Park and said: You're done. Do not waste any more time working on your tan.Hundreds of thousands of airline passengers were grounded for the weekend. JetBlue Airways said it was scrubbing about 880 flights between Saturday and Monday, most to and from hub airports in New York and Boston. Other airlines said they were waiting to be more certain about Irene's path before announcing more cancellations.Thousands of people were already without power. In Charleston, S.C., several people had to be rescued after a tree fell on their car.

Defying the orders, hardy holdouts in North Carolina put plywood on windows, gathered last-minute supplies and tied down boats. More than half the people who live on two remote islands, Hatteras and Ocracoke, had ignored orders to leave, and as time to change their minds ran short, officials ordered dozens of body bags. The last ferry from Ocracoke was set to leave at 4 p.m. Friday.I anticipate we're going to have people floating on the streets, and I don't want to leave them lying there, said Richard Marlin, fire chief for one of the seven villages on Hatteras. The Coast Guard will either be pulling people off their roofs like in Katrina or we'll be scraping them out of their yards.Officially, Irene was expected to make landfall Saturday near Morehead City, on the southern end of the Outer Banks, the barrier island chain. But long before the eye crossed the coastline, the blustery winds and intermittent rains were already raking the coast.National Hurricane Center meteorologist David Zelinsky said earlier Friday that he expected the storm to arrive as a Category 2 or 3 hurricane. Later in the day, other forecasts showed it would strike most of the coast as a Category 1. The scale runs from 1, barely stronger than a tropical storm, to a monstrous 5. On Friday afternoon, Irene was a Category 2.Regardless of how fierce the storm is when it makes landfall, the coast of North Carolina was expected to get winds of more than 100 mph and waves perhaps as high as 11 feet, Zelinsky said.This is a really large hurricane and it is dangerous,he said.Whether it is a Category 2 or 3 at landfall, the effects are still going to be strong. I would encourage people to take it seriously.Officer Edward Mann was driving down the narrow streets of Nags Head looking for cars in driveways, a telltale sign of people planning to ride out the storm against all advice.Bucky Domanski, 71, was working in his garage when Mann walked in. He told the officer he planned to stay. Mann handed Domanski a piece of paper with details about the county's evacuation order. It warned that hurricane force winds would flood the roads and there might not be power or water until well after the storm.You understand we can't help you during the storm, Mann said.I understand,Domanski replied.

After the Outer Banks, the next target for Irene was the Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia, a jagged network of inlets and rivers that floods easily. Emergency officials have said the region is more threatened by storm surge, the high waves that accompany a storm, than wind. Gas stations there were low on fuel Friday, and grocery stores scrambled to keep water and bread on the shelves.In Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell ordered an evacuation of coastal areas.We could be open tonight for business, but there's a very fine line between doing the right thing and putting our staff at risk, said Alex Heidenberger, owner of Mango Mike's restaurant in Bethany Beach, who expects to lose $40,000 to $50,000 in business. It's not so much we're worried about the storm coming tonight, but we want to give them a chance to get out of town and get their affairs in order.Officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington said they were speeding the transfer of their last remaining patients to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The transfer had been planned for Sunday.In Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood, one of the city's oldest waterfront neighborhoods, people filled sandbags and placed them at the entrances to buildings. A few miles away at the Port of Baltimore, vehicles and cranes continued to unload huge cargo ships that were rushing to offload and get away from the storm.

In New York, the Mets postponed games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday with the visiting Atlanta Braves, and the Jets and Giants moved their preseason NFL game up to 2 p.m. Saturday from 7 p.m.And in Atlantic City, N.J., all 11 casinos announced plans to shut down Friday, only the third time that has happened in the 33-year history of legalized gambling in that state.I like gambling, but you don't play with this, Pearson Callender said as he waited for a Greyhound bus out of town. People are saying this is an act of God. I just need to get home to be with my family.
Jennifer Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writers contributing to this report were Bruce Shipkowski in Surf City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Perry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Eric Tucker in Washington; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.; Mitch Weiss in Nags Head, N.C.; Alex Dominguez in Baltimore; Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Jonathan Fahey in New York; and Seth Borenstein in Washington.

Irene evacuations, subway shutdown ordered in NYC AP By MICHAEL VIRTANEN and SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press – 6:15PM FRI AUG 26,11

NEW YORK – More than 300,000 people were told Friday to evacuate and New York ordered buses, planes and its entire subway system shut down as Hurricane Irene marched up the East Coast.It was the first time part of the nation's largest city was evacuated. And never before has the entire mass transit system been shuttered because of a storm.Despite not knowing how the city would react, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was confident people would get out of the storm's way.Waiting until the last minute is not a smart thing to do, Bloomberg said. This is life-threatening.Irene was expected to make landfall in North Carolina on Saturday, then roll along the East Coast before hitting near Manhattan on Sunday.A hurricane warning was issued for the city Friday afternoon and forecasters said if the storm stays on its current path, skyscraper windows could shatter and debris will be tossed around. Streets in southern tip of the city could be under a few feet of water. Bloomberg warned people to stay inside when Irene does hit.Several New York landmarks were under the evacuation order, including the Battery Park City area, where tourists catch ferries to the Statue of Liberty, and Coney Island, famed for its boardwalk and amusement park. The beachfront community of Rockaways and other neighborhoods around the city were also told to be out by Saturday at 5 p.m.I would think that the vast bulk will comply, Bloomberg said of the evacuation order. Unfortunately, there's a handful who will not comply until it's too late. And at that point in time, you can really get stuck.Eighty-two-year-old Abe Feinstein, who has lived in Coney Island since the early 1960s, said he wasn't going anywhere.How can I get out of Coney Island? What am I going to do? Run with this walker? Feinstein said.

The retiree lives on the eighth floor of a building that overlooks the boardwalk; his daughter lives on the third floor. Feinstein watched Hurricane Gloria in 1985 from an apartment down the street.I think I have nothing to worry about, he said. I've been through bad weather before. It's just not going to be a problem for us.
Other initial signs indicated no sense of urgency. By early Friday evening, two evacuation shelters in the Coney Island area were still empty. Nearly 100 shelters were set to open, with a capacity of 71,000 people. The city said it could open more if needed, but officials believed many people would stay with friends or family.The city began evacuating nursing homes and five hospitals Thursday. Getting the rest of the hundreds of thousands of people out will be particularly difficult. In all, New York has about 1.6 million people in Manhattan and about 6.8 million in the city's other four boroughs.Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said they can't run the transit system once sustained winds reach 39 mph, and they need eight hours to move trains and equipment to safety. The subway system won't reopen until at least Monday.Pumps will have to remove water from flooded subway stations. Even on a dry day, about 200 pump rooms remove between 13 million to 15 million gallons of water from the subway system because water seeps into the tunnels, which run from just below street level to 180 feet underground.Bridges could also be closed as the storm approaches, clogging traffic in an already congested city.The city faced its first hurricane since 1985 when Gloria hit Long Island as a Category 2 storm with winds gusts of up to 100 mph. Irene is expected to be a Category 1, with winds of at least 74 mph, when it hits New York.The mayor warned residents not to be fooled by the sunny weather Friday and said police officers would use loudspeakers on patrol vehicles to spread the word about the evacuation.We do not have the manpower to go door-to-door and drag people out of their homes, he said.Nobody's going to get fined. Nobody's going to go to jail. But if you don't follow this, people might die.

Construction was stopping. Workers were securing scaffolding and crews at the site of the World Trade Center dismantled a crane. Bloomberg said there would be no affect on the Sept. 11 memorial opening. Concerts and other events were canceled.In a city where many residents don't own a car, Bloomberg said he still believed officials could handle any overflow of the transit system.Nobody expects you to go walk 10 miles, he said. You'll get to the shelter, it's our responsibility and we think that we can handle it.The evacuation posed a logistical challenge. For those with cars, parking is available at the city's evacuation centers. From there, each family will be assigned to a shelter. Buses will run from the evacuation centers to the shelters.In the Queens community of the Rockaways, more than 111,000 people live on a barrier peninsula connected to the city by two bridges and to Long Island to the west. There is no subway service there.The MTA has never before halted its entire system — which carries about 5 million passengers on an average weekday — before a storm, though it was seriously hobbled by an August 2007 rainstorm that disabled or delayed every one of the city's subway lines. The last planned shutdown of the entire transit system was during a 2005 strike.In the last 200 years, New York has seen only a few significant hurricanes. In September of 1821, a hurricane raised tides by 13 feet in an hour and flooded all of Manhattan south of Canal Street, the southernmost tip of the city. The area now includes Wall Street and the World Trade Center memorial.In 1938, a storm dubbed the Long Island Express came ashore about 75 miles east of the city on neighboring Long Island and then hit New England, killing 700 people and leaving 63,000 homeless.Virtanen reported from Albany, N.Y.Samantha Gross can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/samanthagross