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Old 27-08-11, 13:03   #10
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Default re: Hurricane/Tropical Storm Season=Katia- WARNINGS & UPDATES

Update: Hurricane Irene makes landfall




Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina (CNN) -- Somewhat weakened but still ferocious, Hurricane Irene slammed into the North Carolina coast Saturday morning, drenching the coastline and starting an ominous northward march up the Atlantic Seaboard.
The massive Category 1 hurricane made landfall near Cape Lookout around 7:30 a.m. with top sustained winds of 85 miles per hour thrashing sand and water in every direction.
Kitty Hawk braced next for a nasty right hook from Irene.
Ten of thousands of people in North Carolina were without power as reports of damage started filtering in.
About 190,000 customers of Progress Energy lost power, said company spokeswoman Lauren Bradford. Gusty winds will affect restoration efforts even with tripled crews, she said.
In nearby Ocracoke, at the southern end of the Outer Banks, a couple of hundred residents riding out the storm lost power early Saturday morning. Their power lines are strung along poles mounted on the highest sand dunes.
"The power went off for good around 5 a.m.," said Clayton Gaskill, who had been trying to keep the island's tiny radio station, WOVV, running through the night. "We won't be back on the air until the storm goes by, because there's no shelter for the portable generators," he said in a text message to CNN.
In Atlantic Beach, which did not feel the full brunt of the storm, a hotel face ripped away and part of a pier was washed into the raging sea. Walls of water came gushing onto land, flooding waterfront roads.
Hurricanes usually weaken over land, but Irene's first U.S. target, the slivers of North Carolina islands in the Atlantic, are marshlands surrounded by water and Irene is expected to keep churning with hurricane force.
The National Hurricane Center said extremely dangerous storm tide could raise water levels by as much as 9 feet in some parts of North Carolina. It also warned of the possibility of tornadoes touching down.
In its northward run, Irene is expected to cause trouble all the way up to Boston this weekend. Parts of New York City, including sea-level lower Manhattan, braced for major flooding.
New York has ordered mandatory evacuation for 370,000 of its residents.
Irene prompted the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights, the imminent shutdown of the New York subway system and an unprecedented mandatory evacuation in parts of "the city that never sleeps."
Forecasters expect Irene to bring deadly storm surge, heavy rainfall and misery to millions.
As of 8 a.m. ET Saturday, Hurricane Irene was centered about 5 miles north of Cape Lookout. It was moving north-northeast at 14 miles per hour, the hurricane center said.
An ocean surge of up to 11 feet is possible in coastal North Carolina, tearing away beaches and probably damaging homes, businesses and other structures before the storm slides up the East Coast to New England, said Bill Read, the Hurricane Center director.
A storm surge also will raise water levels up to 4 to 8 feet above ground level in areas stretching from the North Carolina-Virginia border to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
"The surge will be accompanied by large, destructive and life-threatening waves," the hurricane center said.
Irene could dump a total of 6 to 10 inches of rain from eastern North Carolina up to western New England and as much as 15 inches of rain in isolated areas, the weather agency said.
The storm could compound the heavy rainfall by thrashing water from the Atlantic Ocean onto land.
Ernie Seneca, a North Carolina spokesman, said authorities are concerned about the "entire eastern half of the state."
"This hurricane could potentially impact an area that includes 20 counties and 3.5 million people," he said.
Mandatory evacuation orders were in force in 19 North Carolina counties, said Julia Jarema, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Emergency Management Center.
New York City issued an unprecedented mandatory evacuation order, covering low-lying areas of all five of the city's boroughs. About 250,000 people are affected.
"The low-lying coastal areas that will be endangered most by storm surge include Coney Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, Far Rockaway and Broad Channel in Queens, South Beach, Midland Beach, and other low-lying areas on Staten Island, Battery Park City in Manhattan, and some small sections of the Bronx," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
"We have never done a mandatory evacuation before, and we wouldn't be doing this now if we didn't think the storm had the potential to be very serious."
The order meant five New York City hospitals had to evacuate patients.
Rashida Mungin, a nurse at NYU Langone Medical Center, and her colleagues worked nonstop Friday to help move patients to hospitals outside the flood zone.
"(Intensive care) patients and neonatal were top priority -- they were transferred first," she said.
Mungin said nurses recalled the horrific story of New Orleans hospital patients getting trapped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- and wanted to avoid a similar situation.
"It's better to be prepared," she said.
Irene's current track could make it the most destructive hurricane to strike New York City since 1938.
Authorities warned of widespread and prolonged power outages, flash flooding and storm surges that could flood low-lying communities and possibly inundate subway systems.
The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority will shut down its system at noon Saturday, and five airports in metropolitan New York will close to arriving flights beginning at noon Saturday.
New Jersey Transit will shut down at noon Saturday, and the transit system in Philadelphia will halt service at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday. Boston said it intends to keep its system operating.
Various airlines canceled flights to and from the region starting Saturday, including American Airlines, AirTran Airways, JetBlue Airways, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines. US Airways is planning "significant flight schedule reductions" at a number of airports.
The storm also forced the cancellations of concerts, sporting events and, in New York, all the weekend's Broadway shows.
President Barack Obama signed emergency declarations for Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local efforts.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency "is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency," the White House said in a statement.
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