Hurricane Irene hits the U.S. coast. As New York City Police Department car patrols the empty streets near Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, New York, early August 28, 2011 as Hurricane Irene hits the city and Tri State area with rain and high winds. The National Hurricane Center said late Sunday morning that the tropical storm's maximum sustained winds had decreased to about 97 km/h.
Irene was to continue weakening as it passes over New England, and it's expected to move over eastern Canada by Sunday night. It remains a massive storm, however, with powerful winds extending more than 480 kilometres from the centre.
Forecasters say the storm is currently centered about 10 miles west of Danbury, Connecticut. It is moving to the north-northeast at 42 km/h. Rainfall overflowed sewers and seawater lapped at sidewalks at the edges of New York from densely populated lower Manhattan to the far reaches of Queens as a weakening Irene made landfall over Coney Island early Sunday.
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.
A little past 9 a.m., the wind ebbed, the rain stopped and residents of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach section came out of their homes to look at the pounding Atlantic surf.
New York power utility Consolidated Edison (ED.N) said on Sunday it hasn't made a final decision on whether to cut power to Lower Manhattan due to storm surges, but flooding in the area appeared less severe than some forecasters had expected. Consolidated Edison supplies power to more than 3 million homes and businesses in New York City -- or more than 8 million residents -- said that around 95,000 of its customers had experienced power cuts so far in the city and nearby Westchester County. But so far only one customer was affected in the borough of Manhattan, which includes New York's low-lying Financial District.
Any decision to cut power pre-emptively to Lower Manhattan could still be made in the coming hours, but "flooding there is not looking as bad as some expected," said spokesman Chris Olert.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Manhattan
8/28/2011
News Staff
