Impact of Hurricane Irene: Known Dead, 2 Million Without Power

Thursday, Hurricane Irene moved northbound across the east coast of the United States after hitting the Bahamas hard.

Hurricane Irene was moving at 115 mph winds today at five o’clock EST, making it a Category 3 Hurricane. A fear going into Thursday was that the path of the storm would move westward enough to threaten the Maryland area, including Washington D.C.

After already seeing the Bahamas lose power, endure flooding, and having multiple buildings damaged, the fears of the American citizens are completely founded.

According to Bill Read of the National Hurricane Center, the storm has the potential to hit New York and the surrounding area at a strength of a Category 2 and with approximately 100 mile per hour winds.

All across the east coast states, heavy rain is expected with as much as ten inches of heavy rain in some areas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is already getting ready to go to work in the event that major damage is done and people are in need of major help.

Every time we talk about a hurricane in the United States, we look back to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the Gulf states. While Hurricane Irene is not expected to be nearly as strong, the fear is always there in the minds of Americans.

Hurricane Irene marches north, leaving at least 8 people dead and close to 2 million without power in the states it has already hit. Tonight it bore down on millions more from the Delmarva peninsula to the Jersey Shore and the New York metropolitan area.

The deaths reported so far included victims of car accidents and falling tree limbs. One man suffered a heart attack as he boarded up his house in North Carolina. Many more -- the precise numbers change -- have been injured as a result of high winds and tornadoes that have reportedly touched down in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Nearly 10,000 airline flights have been canceled around the country. Philadelphia's airport, among others, completely shut down operations as of 10:30 p.m., and New York's three major airports said they would as well.

whether excessive hurricane Irene in action?

At The Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz castigates local and national media for overhyping Hurricane Irene:

Someone has to say it: cable news was utterly swept away by the notion that Irene would turn out to be Armageddon. […]

Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly—say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya—was to risk driving viewers elsewhere. Websites, too, were running dramatic headlines even as it became apparent that the storm wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

It’s useful to imagine the version of this column Earth-two Howard Kurtz wrote (assuming we lived in this alternate universe) after Irene picked up speed and moisture on Saturday, morphed into a Category 2 hurricane – with sustained winds of 100 miles per hour—and struck New York City with a direct hit, killing hundreds of people who were unable to evacuate, and causing $27 billion in economic damage.

In this world, Howard Kurtz was outraged by the complacency of local and national news organizations, who stressed the rarity of serious hurricanes on the North Atlantic seaboard and downplayed the potential threat of Irene. “If only the media had met hurricane-force winds with hurricane-force warnings,” wrote Earth-Two Kurtz, “then we would have been spared lost lives and terrible damage.”

You get the point. Hurricanes are unpredictable creatures—strong storms can diminish to the point of harmlessness, while seemingly weak ones can become dangerous in a matter of hours. Given the high chance that Irene could have been far worst than it was, local and national media were doing their job by covering hurricane developments and urging caution at every opportunity.

The same goes for government officials, and in particular, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Governor Chris Chrisie. It’s only because of luck that we can describe their evacuation orders and moves to prevent mass drownings as overreactions. Had the Northeast been hit with the force of a category 1 (or 2) hurricane, those precautions would have saved lives, and we would have been thankful for them.

As it stands, even with ample preparation, Hurricane Irene wasn’t without its toll: 24 deaths, 2.4 million people evacuated, 4 million people without electricity, and billions of dollars in damage. When someone says that we “overreacted,” remember: It could have been a lot worse.

f you’ve turned on the TV or opened the newspaper in the past few days, you’ve probably heard of a little storm named Irene. Correction: a massive Category 2 hurricane named Irene that is barreling towards the East Coast and expected to slam into North Carolina tomorrow afternoon. The 750 mile wide storm is a particularly slow moving hurricane, and New York City is preparing for Irene to hit early Sunday morning as a Category 1 with winds up to 90 mph. Some forecasters think it may even hit us as a stronger Category 2 storm. All of the 5 boroughs are in a state of emergency; Coney Island, the Rockaways, Battery Park City, and parts of Long Island have all been evacuated; and the MTA is prepared to shut down the entire transportation system. The storm is being called a “once in 50-year hurricane” for the Northeast.

picture of hurricane Irene 10 years ago today

Many are sure to remember that Friday.

Hurricane Irene came barging into town with torrential downpours, gusty winds and an element of surprise.

That was on Oct. 15, 1999 - 10 years ago today.

The storm produced 10 to 20 inches of rain and caused severe widespread flooding. More than 700,000 homes and businesses lost power.

And eight people were killed. Five were electrocuted and three drove vehicles into canals. Additionally, tornadoes injured three people in Broward County.

Irene surprised many because they weren't expecting a hurricane, even though they knew a storm was approaching.

At the time, some criticized the National Hurricane Center for that.

But forecasters noted they had issued a tropical storm warning and that most of South Florida experienced just that, a tropical storm, not a hurricane.

Irene was a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 150 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour) and stronger gusts when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on August 15, 2005. The third hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic season, Irene is not expected to threaten land.

While Hurricane Irene may not affect the United States or Canada, it is having an effect on haze over the Atlantic Ocean. Hot, humid weather in the Mid-Atlantic states has allowed pollution to build up. As the haze flows out to sea, it is encountering Hurricane Irene, which is steering the haze in a wide circle around its northern edge.
The large image provided above is at MODIS maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The image is available in additional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.