Posted on 08/28/2011 8:25:32 AM PDT by mandaladon
KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. (AP) — From North Carolina to New Jersey, Hurricane Irene appeared to have fallen short of the doomsday predictions. But with rivers still rising, and roads impassable because of high water and fallen trees, it could be days before the full extent of the damage is known.
More than 4.5 million homes and businesses along the East Coast lost power, and at least 11 deaths were blamed on the storm. But as day broke Sunday, surprisingly light damage was reported in many places, with little more than downed trees and power lines.
"I think it's a little strong to say we dodged a bullet. However, it certainly could have turned out worse for the Hampton Roads area" in Virginia, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Montefusco.
At the same time, officials warned of the possibility of severe flooding over the next few days as runoff from the storm makes its way into creeks and rivers. In some parts of the Northeast, the ground was soggy even before the storm because of an extremely rainy August.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett cautioned: "The rivers may not crest until Tuesday or Wednesday. This isn't just a 24-hour event."
Irene brought rain of six inches to a foot to many places along the East Coast. The storm was still pummeling the New York City area on Sunday morning, dropping below hurricane strength but still dangerous with 65 mph winds and heavy downpours.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had initially warned that Irene could be a "catastrophic" monster with record storm surges of up to 8 feet.
But in Virginia Beach, the city posted on Twitter late Saturday that initial reports were promising, with the resort area suffering minimal damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The MSM and worst of all Shepherd Smith were peeing in their pants over this non event. Hurricane Andrew bad, this? A lot of rain and a lot of self urination by reporters like Shep Smith and Anderson Blooper.
Thanks for understanding. I didn’t want to sound like a jerk, but it is what it is...
With the mess that Katrina caused and the political fallout for President Bush.....Mr. Obama and other politicians weren’t going to take a chance....and they over reacted. However, unless the NOAA has been coopted into making false predictions. They did, up until the last day, show this was going to be a major hurricane. Which is was earlier in its life cycle. It seemed to lose steam as it approached landfall in NC.
I will NEVER feel sorry for Obama nor defend him...but he just got himself in a no win situation where he was damned no matter what he did. I would call that a case of him being shown the value of humility....IF he is wise enough to learn from it. I doubt he is.
Thats funny.
I am sooooooooooooo saving that. Speaking as an Alabamian who went thru ‘74 and ‘11.
What kills me about that photo is that Obama is pushed into the corner of the room, sitting on who-knows-what. What’s General Jowls doing? No one would give up their seat to the President?
I wonder sometimes if the mission were “in progress” when the photo was snapped and...Obama wasn’t there? Maybe he was ‘shopped in afterwards?
“Even so this was not a storm to ignore.”
Absolutely not; my town had one of the NJ fatalities. We have a lot of power out, and the NJ shore had pieces of the boardwalk floating around in the street. They had bad beach erosion as well.
We’d better start praying about TD 12.
http://www.spaghettimodels.com/. All that warm ocean and little direction change forecast.....
I’m hoping it’s just indigestion that’s causing a serious nagging at my gut when I look at this thing on sattelite!
My guess is the total bill will be something like $8 Billion in total losses due to the storm along with 25 or so deaths.
You didn’t have more rain in total (there are places near Philly that had approximately 14 inches of ran out of his storm.
However, what happened in Chicago was no joke.
That is very funny, 8/23/2011 Nevar Forget!
This is route 7 the main north-south artery for the west side of the state.
This is downtown Wilmington, VT.
Exactly. I don’t have any idea why so many FReepers are being so damned smug about this storm. There are some areas on the east coast that were spared, but some, like Vermont, that have been devastated.
We will keep praying for you and those affected by this storm.
Thanks Mike.
I had to put up a sign at my store telling people which streets weren't closed down to make their commute easier. The only positive thing was my landscapers were able to seal the sides of my house where I had leaks last year.
My friend sent me pictures from coastal Virginia and said they had power and no flooding which is good. I think my point was we knew there would be a ton of rain and thus flooding, what was unnecessary was the ridiculous hype by the cable news morons.
I swear they were praying that Irene would magically transform from a Cat 1 to a Cat 5 so it could kill more people and thus boost their ratings. Cynical on my part I know but their coverage was embarrassing to watch.
Who’s the genius who wrote this article? /s
Fair enough. It was pretty clear that she was struggling to reorganize, regardless of pressure.
I can’t speak for up north, but down here in NC, the thing that worried people about Irene wasn’t so much her sheer wind strength or lack thereof. It was storm surge on the coast—she was carrying the surge of a much stronger hurricane due to how big she was—and rain inland. Eastern NC was devastated by the back-to-back double whammy of Dennis and Floyd in 1999. Mercifully, Irene doesn’t look to be anywhere near that bad; it’s been very dry down east and the ground was able to soak up at least some of that 12”+ of rain. But there were still a million people without power and thousands upon thousands of trees taken down just in NC alone, with hundreds of thousands more in each state to the northeast up Irene’s path.
Oddly, Irene actually strengthened slightly and reformed the back (southern) side of her eyewall *after* she hit land. She seemed to get a final burst of energy from the marshlands on the inland side of the sounds separating the Outer Banks from the mainland before heading back out to see off Virginia Beach and heading up toward New Jersey.
I agree the hype was totally out of control on the storm, but some Freepers are being a little too cavalier about Irene. This was no summer thunderstorm, this storm has done a fair bit of damage on either end of her track (NC/VA, and New England) even if she spared much of the mid-Atlantic and NYC.
}:-)4
So true. We took a little drive around our area after the storm and saw little damage. We saw quite a few downed limbs and although we heard of downed trees in some areas, we didn't actually see any in or near our neighborhood.
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