troubling new assessment. they re expecting the storm surge from irene to flood the area, which includes the ground zero construction site, with anywhere from 6 to 12 feet of water. and other low-lying neighborhoods under mandatory evacuation orders. the city transit system will shut down at noon tomorrow. all five local airports also in danger of flooding. they re being closed, arriving flights, starting at noon. this is what they re concerned of. pictures of irene hitting the bahamas. new yorkers are used to seeing this on tv, not up close, though. they might see a version of it about 36 hours from now. all day today irene was making its way north. as it did, emergency plans started kicking in. warnings went up. people stocked up or hunkered down or they took off. in a moment we ll check in with anderson and our entire team for irene. first, chad myers and the late bulletin from the national hurricane center. chad, what s the latest? not much change in the forecast and no
here s what hurricane irene looked like when it hit the bahamas. new yorkers might see it here and soon. here is the view as irene began moving up the eastern seaboard, and as it did emergency plans started to kick in. airlines began cancelling flights. hospitals moving patients. and here in new york mayor mike bloomberg issued the first evacuation orders in city history for low-lying areas, including the one, the area that we are standing in tonight. and for the first time in modern memory, a hurricane warning is in effect for new york city. meantime as we speak, north carolina s outer banks are getting hit. we ve got reporters all around the region. in a moment we ll check with correspondent on the ground there. i want to begin with chad myers who just got his hands on a fresh update from the national hurricane center. chad, what have you learned? i ve learned now that storm has turned to the north-northeast. that is the continuation of the right-hand turn, anderson, that
a troubling new assessment. they are expecting the storm surge to flood the area with anywhere from six to 12 feet of water. other low lying neighborhoods on a mandatory evacuation orders. the mass transit system will shut down as of noon tomorrow. this is what they are concerned about. pictures of irene hit the bha mas. not much change in the forecast and not much change in the track. we are still at 100 miles per hour. still forecasting to get slightly weaker as we run the storm over north carolina and on up into the northeast. that is good news. i still think because of the size of this storm that that flooding po sensual in downtown new york in manhattan in even towards rockaway beach and long beach in new york still there as the waves will be pushing and the winds will be pushing water up against that shore for a very long time. here is what has happened to the storm as the turn happened. it was very low pressure. right now the pressure is low enough to make a catego
martha s vineyard. paul goodloe is in massachusetts for us. good morning, paul. what impact did earl leave by you? reporter: really not a whole lot. that s the good news. here again in chatham we have the strongest wind gusts around yeah, 37 miles per hour. that is just below tropical storm force winds. i have a hand held wind meter in my hand. the last couple minutes or, so winds disgusting around 22, 23 miles per hour. and we re expecting that throughout the day. but as you see overhead, nothing but blue sky. people are returning to the beaches here as well. we picked up a couple inches of rain across the cape and the islands as well. roughly two to five inches of rain. generally two to three. but in terms of the wind gust, as earl passed by, weakened down to a tropical storm. so nantucket island, 54 to 58 mile-per-hour wind gusts, that s the strongest as earl passed. martha s vineyard, 44 mile-per-hour wind gusts. so that definitely caused some minor damage. overall, nothing wor
are expecting? well, shep, i have been using my pocket wind meter clocking winds right now 26 miles per hour. understand the brunt of the storm is still hours away. residents here are hoping that the storm will only sideswipe the outer banks but they anticipate there is a very good chance that the storm will move further inland and that they may be experiencing tropical storm force winds easily but quite possibly hurricane force winds in excess of 74 miles per hour, shep. shepard: how confident are officials there in north carolina that everybody is as ready as they are going to be for this thing? state officials are very confident that people have taken the proper precautions by and large the tourists who have been urged to evacuate the outer banks have already left and local residents who decided to hunker down, we watched them as they stocked up at local grocery and hardware stores. many of them battening down the hatches, pouring up windows it appears that most people are wel