Tornado warnings have been issued in the New York City and southern New England regions asIrene moves up the east coast of the United States leaving a path of debris and destruction that has claimed at least nine lives so far.
A significant increase in the forward speed of the storm is expected and the storm's passage will be accompanied by heavy rain fall and possible tornadoes. Forecasts indicate Irene will weaken after landfall in New England and become a post-tropical cyclone tonight or early Monday.
At least 3.1 million homes and businesses are without power while thousands have been evacuated from their homes and approximately 9,600 residents in New York City are currently in evacuation shelters as Irene moves north at maximum sustained winds reaching 80 miles per hour.
Over 270,000 in New York have lost power, while in New Jersey at least 460,000 statewide are without power. The National Grid is reporting that 19,000-plus homes in Rhode Island lost power while 6,000-plus homes are currently without power in Massachusetts.
In lower Manhattan at Wall Street and South Street water from New York's East River is already breaching the seawall. Work crews are swarming the area attempting to halt water from shoving down the streets, where it could affect transformers in lower Manhattan and flow into the subway system.
The north tube of the Holland Tunnel has now been closed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey due to flooding.
Irene made landfall along the coast of New Jersey near Little Egg inlet, just north of Atlantic City, around 5:35 a.m. The estimated intensity of at landfall was 75 mph.
It is the second time Irene made landfall since slamming into North Carolina Saturday.
The hurricane is expected to move near or over the mid-Atlantic coast this morning and on to southern New England by the afternoon.
Irene has been traveling north right on schedule. If it continues as it has, the center of the storm will be 40 miles south of New York City at 7 a.m., still over the ocean, off the coast near Asbury Park, N.J.
By 9 a.m. the center of the storm will be just south of Queens, N.Y. and between 10 and 11 a.m. the landfall is expected to be somewhere east of Manhattan on the Queens-Nassau border.
The worst of the wind and surf is expected to be between 7 a.m. and 12 p.m. throughout Long Island and parts of New York City. Tornado warning for Brooklyn, Queens and Southern Nassau County were issued overnight by the National Weather Service.
For more on how Hurricane Irene is impacting New York and the surrounding tri-state area, go to ABC News affiliate WABC-TV.
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.
Two children are among the hurricane-related deaths: an 11-year-old boy in Virginia was killed when a tree crashed through his roof, and a child in North Carolina died in a car crash resulting from out traffic lights, according to the Associated Press.
A Maryland woman was killed when a chimney fell on her house. The unnamed woman was not killed instantly and was transported to a hospital where she was later pronounced dead, according to the Maryland Emergency Management Agency.
In Florida, a surfer and another beachgoer were killed by heavy waves, according to the Associated Press.
Tornadoes have reportedly touched down in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Delaware. National Hurricane Center John Cangialosi says such tornadoes are likely to continue popping up as Irene moves north, and that conditions are especially ripe in New York City and Pennsylvania.
For an hour on Saturday night, there was a tornado warning for Philadelphia's Center City, though there was no indication a tornado had actually touched down. Tornadoes often form during hurricanes, but are hard to spot or track because of all the violent weather around them.
Late Saturday night, the Unit 1 reactor at CENG's Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Calvert County, Md. automatically went offline after heavy gusts of winds caused a large piece of aluminum siding to become dislodged from a building. The siding came in contact with our main transformer.
The Calvert Cliffs facility is reportedly safe and stable, as are all employees, but an Unusual Event -- lowest of four emergency classifications by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- has been declared. The company says there is no threat from this incident.
Water levels have been rising rapidly in advance of the center of Irene, with recently observed storm surge values of 3.2 feet at Ocean City, Md., 3.7 feet at Lewes Delaware, 3.4 feet at Cape May, N.J, and 3.5 feet at New York Harbor.
President Obama declared today that emergencies exist in Washington, D.C. and the State of Delaware, and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from Irene.
The major concern at this point is now flooding, as water levels are anticipated to possibly rise up to much as six to eight feet above ground level within the hurricane warning area -- which extends all the way from the North Carolina, Virginia border, all the way up to Cape Cod, according to Cangialosi.
As winds have swept through Washington, D.C. and Maryland, power outages have followed. At least 6,500 residents lost power in the capital while in Maryland at least 20,000 homes lost electricity.
Winds have gusted to 59 mph in D.C., while wind in the New York area has gusted to near 50 mph, with over 2" of rain so far.
New York has anticipated an almost-direct hit by Irene Sunday. Mayor Mike Bloomberg, having urged 370,000 residents of low-lying areas to move to higher ground, said at a press briefing late Saturday night that it was now too late, and people should stay indoors.
"The time for evacutation is over," he said.
More than 30,000 cots were set up at shelters, though only about 5,500 people had arrived to use them Saturday evening.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops deployed to Long Island, New York City, and the Hudson Valley area to help with the storm. Troops will help staff shelters, control evacuation routes, monitor flood threats at the World Trade Center site and work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to secure railways and train tunnels.
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