NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Hurricane Center in Miami says that Irene has lost hurricane strength and made landfall on New York's Coney Island. The New York Times reports that the storm has been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm.
Forecasters say Irene's winds have fallen to 65 mph.
They say Irene should move over New England by the afternoon. Officials also warn that isolated tornadoes are possible in the northeast throughout the morning.
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As of Sunday morning Con Ed reported 60,000 were without power. (See map of power outages across the region here).
EARLIER: Rainfall overflowed sewers and seawater lapped at sidewalks at the edges of New York City from densely populated lower Manhattan to the far reaches of Queens as a weakening Irene made landfall over Coney Island early Sunday.
Ocean water streamed into the main streets of the Rockaways, a peninsula in Queens that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had ordered evacuated. In Brooklyn, Coney Island streets were also under water, and in Red Hook, also along the harbor, water was coming in about 100 yards.
In Manhattan, water from New York Harbor washed the edge the sidewalk at Battery Park along the tip of the island. About a foot of water lapped over the wall of the marina in front of the New York Mercantile Exchange in lower Manhattan. A low-lying section of the promenade hugging Battery Park was also submerged.
One of two tubes of the Holland Tunnel, one of the main conduits between the borough and New Jersey, was closed because of flooding, authorities said.
Irene weakened after landfall over the North Carolina coast Saturday, but it was still a massive storm with sustained winds of up to 65 mph as it approached the city. Coinciding with a tide that was higher than normal, water levels were expected to rise as much as 8 feet.
Power was already out for hundreds of thousands of customers around the city and on New York's Long Island.
A possible storm surge on the fringes of lower Manhattan could send seawater streaming into the maze of underground vaults that hold the city's cables and pipes, knocking out power to thousands and crippling the nation's financial capital, forecasters said. Officials' feared water lapping at Wall Street, ground zero and the luxury high-rise apartments of Battery Park City. A tornado warning was briefly issued for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens early Sunday.
Battery Park City in lower Manhattan was virtually deserted as rain and gusty winds pummeled streets and whipped trees.
Resident Colin Mahoney was one of a handful of people in his building to defy the evacuation order and ride out the storm. "I'm from New England. We do storms there," Mahoney said as he walked along the Hudson River promenade in the pouring rain.
But, he added, "The mayor did the right thing. He had to."
Building supervisors who stayed behind were busy preparing for possible damage.
"We unplugged the drains and we fastened anything loose or removed it," said Malachy Darcy, the supervisors at 17 Battery Place, a 36-floor building facing the New York Harbor.
Darcy went to check the headwall across the street which would hold back any water surge, hoping it would hold back water.
In Times Square, shops boarded up windows and sandbags were stacked outside of stores. Construction at the World Trade Center site came to a standstill.
But taxi cabs were open for business as some residents donned rain gear and headed outside to check the weather or to head home after hotel shifts.
"I have to work. I would lose too much money," said cabbie Dwane Imame, who said he worked through the night. "There have been many people, I have been surprised. They are crazy to be out in this weather."
Bloomberg ordered more than 370,000 people out of low-lying areas, mostly in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Only 9,600 people checked-in to shelters and an untold number defied the order.
"Oh, forget Bloomberg. We ain't going anywhere," 60-year-old Evelyn Burrus said at a large public housing complex in Brooklyn. "Go to some shelter with a bunch of strangers and bedbugs? No way."
Late Saturday, Bloomberg said it was no longer safe to be outside.
"The time for evacuation is over. Everyone should now go inside and stay inside," he said.
Many New Yorkers took the evacuation in stride. Some planned hurricane parties ? some streaked through Times Square.
"We already have the wine and beer, and now we're getting the vodka," said Martin Murphy, a video artist who was shopping at a liquor store near Central Park with his girlfriend.
"If it lasts, we have dozens of movies ready, and we'll play charades and we're going to make cards that say, `We survived Irene,'" he said.
The center of the storm was supposed to pass east of Manhattan about midmorning. The wind and rain wasn't to taper off until Sunday afternoon.
All subway, bus and commuter rail service was shuttered so officials could get equipment safely away from flooding, downed trees or other damage. It was the first time the nation's biggest transit system has shut down because of a natural disaster.
Boilers and elevators also were shut down in public housing in evacuation areas to encourage tenants to leave and to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators if the power went out.
Some hotels also shut off their elevators and air conditioners. Others had generators ready to go.
At a shelter in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, public housing residents arrived with garbage bags filled with clothing; others pushed carts loaded with their belongings.
Tenants said management got them to leave by telling them the water and power would be shut off.
"For us, it's him," said Victor Valderrama, pointing to his 3-year-old son. "I didn't want to take a chance with my son."
Con Edison brought in hundreds of extra utility workers from around the country. While the foot of Manhattan is protected by a seawall and a network of pumps, Con Ed vice president John Mucci said the utility stood ready to turn off the power to about 17,000 people in the event of severe flooding.
Mucci said it could take up to three days to restore the power if the cables became drenched with saltwater, which can be particularly damaging.
The New York Stock Exchange has backup generators and can run on its own, a spokesman said.
Con Ed also shut down about 10 miles of steam pipes underneath the city to prevent explosions if they came in contact with cold water. The shutdown affected 50 commercial and residential customers around the city who use the pipes for heat, hot water and air conditioning.
It could take days for the power to be restored. The subway system, which carries 5 million passengers on an average weekend, wasn't expected to restart until Monday at the earliest.
As Irene passes by, tides are higher than usual. The phenomenon adds about a half a foot to high tides, said Stephen Gill, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The storm surge was likely to be as much as 4 to 8 feet.
More than 8.3 million people live in New York City, and nearly 29 million in the metropolitan area.
A hurricane warning was issued for the city for the first time since Gloria in September 1985. That storm blew ashore on Long Island with winds of 85 mph and caused millions of dollars in damage, along with one death in New York.
City police rescued two kayakers who capsized in the surf off Staten Island. They were found with their life jackets on, bobbing in the roiling water.
The area's three major airports ? LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark Liberty ? were closed. With the subways closed, many were left to hail taxis. To encourage cab-sharing and speed the evacuation, passengers were charged not by the mile but by how many different fare "zones" their trip crossed.
Dozens of buses arrived at the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league ballpark in Coney Island to help residents get out. Nursing homes and hospitals were emptied.
PHOTO: Hurricane Rearranges Church Sign Letters
Patch reports:
The congregation of a church in College Park, Md., got a mixed message after winds from Hurricane Irene rearranged the letters of their yard sign overnight.More photos here.
Photo courtesy of Shannon Hoffman
From Ocean City Patch live blog:
Ocean City Patch editor Doug Bergen captured this image of a fox, apparently startled or flooded from his den by the storm, in a parking lot in Ocean City, N.J.
Point Pleasant Patch reports:
In the Jersey Shore, many were choosing the solidly standing, bricks-and-mortar schools over their own comfy beds. Staying at home, they said, provided little comfort.
Indeed, shelters at Toms River High School North and Intermediate North became full overnight. Toms River High School East became an accessible shelter; but If the 120 cots were to fill, evacuees would have to find room in classrooms.
Wall High School, meanwhile, was overflowing with early refugees from the hurricane. Late Saturday, Police Chief Robert Brice said the high school, one of three emergency shelters set up throughout the county, was already at capacity.
Read the full report here.
Irene Downgraded To Tropical StormNational Hurricane Center reports:
REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT AND NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATE THAT THE CENTER OF IRENE MOVED OVER NEW YORK CITY AROUND 900 AM EDT...1300 UTC. IRENE HAS WEAKENED TO A TROPICAL STORM AND THE ESTIMATED INTENSITY AT LANDFALL WAS 65 MPH...100 KM/H.
More here.
Boston Transit Suspended As Of 8 a.m.The Associated Press reports:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority says it stopped all subway, bus and commuter rail service as of 8 a.m. Sunday as Hurricane Irene twists toward Massachusetts.Customers Up And Down The East Coast Experiencing Power LossesOfficials say suspending service will allow transit workers to make sure the system is operating for Monday morning's commute.
HuffPost's Tom Zeller reports:
Reports were mixed overnight on the number of customers experiencing power losses up and down the East Coast as Irene continued its lumbering march northward, but even a conservative tally of outages being reported by major utilities serving the Atlantic seaboard from North Carolina to New England easily puts the number well over 2 million.
The biggest hits so far remain in North Carolina and Virginia, where more than 1 million customers of Progress Energy and Dominion Power are greeting the day without power this morning.
Progress Energy said late last night that it was planning to set out across its service area in "helicopters, boats and all-terrain vehicles" to assess damage to its power infrastructure, including transmission lines and substations. Progress anticipated it would take "several days" to restore power and repair damage from the storm.
In a YouTube broadcast Saturday evening, Rodney Blevins, Dominion Energy's vice president for distribution operations said the company would be doing damage assessments of its own, and expected to begin working first to restore power to "critical facilities that are important to the community," including hospitals, pumping stations, and other infrastructure.
Further north in the Washington D.C. area, the local utility Pepco was reporting nearly 200,000 customers without power as of 7 a.m., while FirstEnergy and PSE&G, both serving parts of New Jersey, had a combined total of about half a million customers in the dark.
In a statement issued at 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning, officials at PSE&G said the majority of outages were attributable to falling trees and limbs. The company also said that customers can expect long waits before power is restored.
"The state?s largest electric and gas utility has extra personnel and supplies on hand to assure that storm-related emergencies are handled safely and promptly," the company said in an update posted to its Web site. "Even so, customers should be prepared for potentially lengthy outages. Crews will begin to restore service once the heavy winds subside and it is safe to work on overhead electric lines."
The company also said it was expecting gas outages to mount as flooding arising from heavy rains and storm surge overwhelms the utility's gas distribution system.
With the storm currently bearing down on its New York service area this morning, ConEdison said that about 72,000 customers were without power -- most due to high winds -- and that it expected the number of outages to grow. The utility also said that some 400 crews from across the United States -- including from as far off as Colorado and Texas -- were on-scene or en route to the area to help with recovery.
Irene Nearing NYCThe latest news from NOAA may come as no surprise:
...CENTER OF IRENE NEARING NEW YORK CITY...
The report also notes that while Irene is moving with a gradual increase in forward speed (25 mph) and is still a category one hurricane, it's forecast to weaken to a post-tropical cyclone by tonight or early Monday.
Irene Blamed For Fire Death In ConnecticutHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut authorities say a person killed by a fire is apparently the state's first death related to Hurricane Irene.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says police believe the fire was caused by wires knocked down at a house in Prospect, southwest of Hartford.
Irene is knocking down utility lines and causing power outages across the shoreline. The storm center is forecast to make landfall in the Stamford area around 11 a.m. as a weak hurricane or a strong tropical storm. Malloy says 200,000 customers are already without power.
Malloy also closed the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways because they were already littered with debris. He also ordered a tractor trailer ban on all roads across the state.
Hurricane Irene Damage: South Takes StockRALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Hurricane Irene fell short of the doomsday predictions of record-breaking storm surges in North Carolina and Virginia. But a slow-crawling storm that spread out hundreds of miles was still hurling heavy rain and high winds at a wide swath of the East Coast a day after its first U.S. landfall, vexing official attempts to gauge the full damage toll on the region.
Irene's storm surge had triggered scattered flooding in coastal areas after coming ashore Saturday in North Carolina. It plunged at least 2.7 million residential and business power customers into darkness and roughed up one of the most densely populated areas of the country. Initial reports suggested light damages in many areas from Irene, a lower-strength hurricane when it struck the U.S.
But Irene inflicted scattered damage over such a broad area that the total damage ? and costs involved ? were not yet known. Authorities also said teams would be deploying later Sunday, particularly in more remote areas, to assess the extent and severity of those damages after Irene, which was blamed for eight deaths.
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Guards Continue Watch Over Tomb Of The Unknowns At Arlington CemeteryPhotos surfaced on Facebook on Saturday showing a lone sentinel standing guard over Arlington Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns, undeterred by Hurricane Irene's approach.
ABC News reports:
The elite soldiers known as the Tomb Sentinels pride themselves on not letting bad weather interfere with their post. They stayed at their posts in 2003 during Hurricane Isabel, the last hurricane to come near Washington, and during blizzards in 2009-2010, which shut down the Washington, D.C. area for days.Will Hurricane Irene Produce Record Rainfall?Typically when it rains, Tomb Sentinels have the option of standing their watch under a green tent located to the side of the Tomb where they usually remain during wreath-laying ceremonies at the tomb.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Weather forecasts are predicting epic rainfall along the Eastern Seaboard through Monday. But will the downpours rewrite the history books?New Jersey: 166,000 PSE&G Customers Without PowerMaybe.
To do so, Hurricane Irene's actual rainfall must hit the top end of the precipitation forecast. In Atlantic City, N.J., the downpour must exceed it.
In New Jersey, around 166,000 PSE&G customers are without power at this time, the state's largest electric and gas utility company reports in a press release.
The number of outages continues to climb as Hurricane Irene moves north. The utility, which provides electric service to 2.2 million customers, is estimating that power restoration may take several days to a week.Many of the outages are caused by falling trees and limbs, which bring down power lines. Downed wires should always be considered ?live.? STAY AWAY FROM ALL DOWNED LINES. Do not approach or drive over a downed line and do not touch anything that it might be in contact with. To report a downed wire and other visible equipment damage, call 1-800-436-PSEG and tell PSE&G the nearest cross street.
___
Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy, Jennifer Peltz, Amy Westfeldt, Verena Dobnik, Tom Hays, Meghan Barr, David B. Caruso, Colleen Long and Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/28/unusually-quiet-new-york-_0_n_939454.html
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