Gulf coast braces for more rain, winds as Lee moves on (Reuters)

MOBILE, Ala (Reuters) – Gulf Coast residents from Texas to Florida braced for a third day of severe weather on Monday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee continued to lash the region as it moved inland.

Flood and flash flood watches and warnings were in effect from coastal Texas into the Gulf states, with 10 to 15 inches of rain expected, the National Weather Service said on Monday.

Heavy rains will continue to expand northeastward into the Tennessee Valley and southern Appalachian mountains through Tuesday, with rainfall amounts of 4 to 8 inches expected and isolated amounts of 12 inches possible.

"These may cause life threatening flash floods and mudslides," the weather service said.

Severe thunderstorms plowed through Mobile, Baldwin and Washington counties in Alabama just after 8 a.m. on Monday, downing trees and power lines from Dauphin Island to Citronelle.

The NWS issued a tornado watch for southwestern Alabama and northwest Florida and southeast Mississippi until 4 p.m.

On Sunday, tornado activity was reported across portions of Baldwin and Mobile counties in southwest Alabama; Greene, Jasper, Lauderdale, Newton, Perry and Wayne counties in southern Mississippi; and Escambia, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties in northwest Florida.

Keith Williams with the National Weather Service in Mobile said one tornado had been confirmed in the Destin, Florida, area, but the extent of the damage has not been determined.

TEEN SWEPT AWAY

Baldwin County authorities have not released the name of a 16-year-old boy Birmingham, Alabama, boy swept out into the surf on Sunday afternoon just east of Fort Morgan, Alabama.

Maj. Anthony Lowery with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office said three teens were standing near the coastline when a large wave hit, carrying two of them into the surf. One was able to make it back to shore, and rescuers retrieved the mother of the second who tried unsuccessfully to reach her son in the 10-foot waves. The boy remained missing on Monday.

Rupert Lacy, emergency management director in Harrison County, said at least five homes in the coastal Mississippi county were damaged on Sunday by suspected tornado activity in the Saucier community. No injuries were reported.

Lacy said at least one Harrison County resident was taken to a local hospital after he was injured when lightning traveled through a phone line.

"Highway 90 is one of my big concerns. In some places you can't be sure if you're on the beach or the highway," he said.

Lacy said the Mississippi Department of Transportation would be bringing in reinforcements from the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, area to assist in damage assessments on Monday.

Response crews are attuned to the threat of tornadoes after devastating twisters ravaged northern Alabama on April 27, killing more than 230 people and leveling portions of Tuscaloosa, Concord and Pleasant Grove.

Rainfall totals on Monday have ranged from 4 to 5 inches in the northern portion of coastal counties in Alabama and Mississippi to as much as 12 inches near the coast, Williams said. The Florida Panhandle received between 5 and 6 inches.

"We're not really sure about (Monday) because this thing's really moving slow. But there is definitely the possibility of continued rains," Williams said, noting at least 1 to 3 inches of additional rain could be expected.

A coastal flood watch was in effect for the affected areas until 7 p.m. with tides expected to be as much as 3 feet above normal with waves of 7 to 10 feet.

(Reporting by Kelli Dugan; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Peter Bohan)

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Tropical Storm Lee lumbers toward Louisiana coast (Reuters)

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Slow-moving Tropical Storm Lee strengthened as it lumbered toward the Louisiana coast on Saturday, bringing torrential rains that will put the flood defenses of low-lying New Orleans to the test.

The storm is expected to reach the Louisiana coast later on Saturday and bring up to 20 inches of rain to southeast Louisiana over the next few days, including to New Orleans, which was battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The center of Lee was 45 miles southwest of Morgan City, with maximum winds of 60 miles per hour, the hurricane center said. Lee's winds were expected to stay below the 74 mph threshold of hurricane strength.

But the prospect of flooding in low-lying New Orleans evoked memories of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of the city, killed 1,500 people and caused more than $80 billion in damage. Half of the city lies below sea level and is protected by a system of levees and flood gates.

The city's extensive levee system is capable of processing about one inch of rainfall per hour, but the storm's slow-moving nature could bring challenges, officials said.

EVACUATIONS

Low-lying parishes around New Orleans saw rising waters, which covered some roadways in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, but no homes or businesses were threatened. Some residents in Jefferson Parish were ordered to evacuate.

Periodic breaks in the rainfall allowed the city's giant pumps to catch up with the water flow and clear standing water, said Jefferson Parish President John Young.

"Everything looks good," Young told local television. "The pumps are keeping up with the water. We are getting some street flooding."

Lee will weaken once it hits land, but it will lose strength more slowly than normal due to the marshy nature of the Louisiana coast, the hurricane center said.

Lee's northeasterly track could bring heavy rains to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the Appalachian Mountains next week.

Major offshore producers like Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp and BP Plc shut down platforms and evacuated staff earlier this week.

Shell began returning workers to its offshore Perdido platform in the western Gulf of Mexico on Saturday.

About half the U.S. offshore oil production, all based in the Gulf of Mexico, and a third of offshore gas production were shut as of Friday, according to the U.S. government. Most of that output should quickly return once the storm passes.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Friday warned that heavy rains, substantial winds and tidal surges from the Gulf of Mexico could produce flash flooding in parts of New Orleans throughout the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Katia weakened to near tropical storm strength as it churned in the Atlantic Ocean, 485 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands. Katia had maximum winds of 75 mph, moving northwest at 10 miles per hour.

(Additional reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston, Writing by Chris Baltimore; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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NY airports and subway reopen, limited East Coast service (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York-area airports reopened on Monday as U.S. airlines gradually restored more flights to their operations throughout the Northeast that were halted by Hurricane Irene.

New York subways also resumed service, gradually at first, after weekend closure, as did passenger rail Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Philadelphia.

Amtrak service north of Philadelphia was canceled due to flooding, track debris and continued electrical power problems, the railroad said. All Northeast service was shut down on Sunday.

Commuter rail service from Washington to Boston was uneven as most lines struggled to offer full or even partial schedules due to flooding and power outages.

Airlines would need a day to reposition aircraft flown out of the region ahead of the storm, leaving Tuesday as their target for returning normal service to the storm-struck region.

John F Kennedy and LaGuardia in New York and Newark in New Jersey -- biggest U.S. aviation hub with 100 million passengers annually -- were closed on Saturday as the storm bore down on the mid-Atlantic.

The three airports handle about 6,000 flights per day total.

JFK and Newark opened to arrivals at 6 a.m. EDT and will begin handling departures at noon. LaGuardia would open to both arrivals and departures at 7 a.m., the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.

Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston were all open as well.

Airlines began winding down schedules on Friday in advance of Irene. They canceled more than 12,500 flights, including 1,300 on Monday, according to the online tracking service Flightaware.com.

Delta Air Lines include US Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines, and JetBlue Airways were most affected.

Some repositioning flights heading to open airports carried passengers while others were empty. Carriers had to reassemble flight crews and ground staff.

(Reporting by John Crawley; Editing by Derek Caney)

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East Coast readies for "big, bad" Hurricane Irene (Reuters)

WILMINGTON, North Carolina (Reuters) – The United States urged 55 million people on its East Coast on Friday to prepare for the onslaught of massive Hurricane Irene, which President Barack Obama warned could be "extremely dangerous and costly."

"All indications point to this being a historic hurricane," Obama said, as Irene, a wide storm packing winds of more than 100 miles per hour, bore down on the North Carolina coast for an expected landfall on Saturday.

Hundreds of thousands of vacationers and residents were evacuating from coastal areas there and further northward up the East Coast.

Forecasters expect the menacing, broad hurricane to rake up the densely populated eastern seaboard starting on Saturday, then extend on Sunday to New York, America's most populous city with more than 8 million residents, and then into New England.

"The wind field is huge," National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read told Reuters Insider.

The NHC said hurricane force winds extended outward up to 90 miles from Irene's center, while tropical storm force winds extended out to 290 miles, giving the storm a vast wind field width of nearly 600 miles.

Federal and state leaders, from Obama downward, urged the millions of Americans in the hurricane's path to prepare and to heed evacuation orders if they received them.

"If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now .... don't wait, don't delay," Obama said, speaking from the island of Martha's Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast where he is vacationing.

"We all hope for the best but we have to be prepared for the worst," Obama added.

In earlier comments, NHC chief Read said Irene, which will be the first significant hurricane to affect the populous Northeast in decades, would lash the eastern seaboard with tropical storm-force winds and a "huge swath of rain" from the Carolinas to New England.

He said North Carolina would start seeing tropical storm conditions on Friday afternoon. Cities like Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York could experience heavy rain and wind and power outages from the weekend.

Irene weakened early on Friday to a Category 2 hurricane from a 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, but it still was carrying winds of up to 105 miles per hour.

At 11 a.m., its center was churning north 330 miles south-southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

The Miami-based hurricane center suggested on Friday Irene may already have peaked during its passage over the Bahamas, when its wind speeds made it a Category 3 "major" hurricane.

But it could still roar up the eastern seaboard as a broad and dangerous Category 2.

"BIG, BAD STORM"

Coastal communities from the Carolinas to New England stocked up on food and water and tried to secure homes, vehicles and boats. States, cities, ports, hospitals, oil refineries and nuclear plants activated emergency plans.

"We've been through about four or five (hurricanes), but this looks like it'll be the worst," Henry Burke, a vacation homeowner in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, told Reuters.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged residents not to delay precautions. "The window of preparation is quickly closing," Napolitano said.

"This is a big, bad storm," North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue told CNN.

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley told the TV network: "Anyone who thinks this is just a normal hurricane and they can stick it out is being ... selfish and stupid."

The capital was also expected to feel heavy wind and rain. Extensive flight and rail service cancellations were expected.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief Craig Fugate warned millions on the seaboard to expect power outages "for days," flash-flooding and strong winds.

EQECAT, a company that helps the insurance industry predict disaster damage, said Irene's forecast track represented "one of the worst-case scenarios" for the United States.

Wall Street firms scrambled to raise cash into early next week in case Irene causes major disruption in trading.

The repurchase market, a major source of cash for Wall Street firms to fund trades and operations, showed an increase in interest rates on loans that mature on Monday, a sign markets are worried there could be disruptions, if only temporary.

Northeast oil, natural gas and power facilities also made preparations.

Oil prices rose slightly in choppy trade on Friday as traders weighed the approach of Irene toward refineries on the coast against concern about the health of the U.S. economy.

NORTHEAST CITIES PREPARE

Coastal evacuations were under way in North Carolina and were ordered for beach resorts in Virginia, Delaware and Maryland. Airlines began to cut flights at eastern airports.

North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut have declared emergencies.

Irene will be the first hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Ike pounded Texas in 2008.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday that New York City's mass transit system, the nation's biggest that serves 8 million riders a day, will be shut beginning around noon on Saturday because of expected flooding and high winds from Irene.

Cuomo said in a statement the loss of subways, buses and commuter lines that serve the city and nearby suburbs could complicate evacuations.

In Washington, Irene forced the postponement of Sunday's dedication ceremony for the new memorial honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Tens of thousands of people, including President Barack Obama, had been expected to attend.

Flooding from Irene killed at least one person in Puerto Rico and two in Dominican Republic. The storm knocked out power in the Bahamian capital, Nassau, and blocked roads with trees.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton, Tom Brown, Manuel Rueda in Miami, Daniel Trotta, Richard Leong, Joan Gralla and Ben Berkowitz in New York; Jeremy Pelofsky and Vicki Allen in Washington, Laura MacInnis and Alister Bull on Martha's Vineyard; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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Search for hidden damage after East Coast quake (AP)

By BOB LEWIS and VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Bob Lewis And Vicki Smith, Associated Press – 7?mins?ago

MINERAL, Va. – Office buildings, schools and iconic American landmarks were being inspected Wednesday for possible structural flaws caused by a rare East Coast earthquake while those near the epicenter nervously waited out aftershocks.

Public schools and a handful of federal government buildings in Washington remained closed for further assessment, and engineers were taking a closer look at cracks in the Washington Monument and broken capstones at the National Cathedral. Some residents of D.C. suburbs were staying in shelters because of structural concerns at their apartment buildings.

Farther south, Tuesday's 5.8-magnitude quake also shattered windows and wrecked buildings near its Virginia epicenter. There were no known deaths or serious injuries.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the quake serves as a reminder for residents to be prepared.

"We talk about hurricanes this time of year, but we forget that A: earthquakes don't have a season and B: they are not just a western hazard," FEMA administrator Craig Fugate said in an interview Wednesday on ABC's Good Morning America.

In North Carolina, officials were preparing for another potential disaster by inspecting an aging bridge that will be a key evacuation route for people leaving the coast ahead of Hurricane Irene, expected to approach over the weekend. Bridge inspectors on site at the Bonner Bridge saw no visual problems from the quake.

When the quake struck, many feared terrorism in New York and Washington — places where nerves are raw as the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches. The tremblor sent many pouring from high-rises like the Empire State Building.

"I ran down all 60 flights," accounting office worker Caitlin Trupiano said. "I wasn't waiting for the elevator."

Chris Kardian, working in his garage in suburban Richmond, Va., not far from the epicenter, opted for the more prosaic and plausible: He blamed the shaking on two of his children in the overhead playroom.

"I just thought they were running around and being really loud," he said. "After about 15 seconds, it didn't stop and I thought, `I don't have that many kids in the house!'"

The most powerful earthquake to strike the East Coast in 67 years shook buildings and jarred as many as 12 million people. The U.S. Geological Survey said it was centered 40 miles northwest of Richmond in Mineral, and it has produced at least four aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 2.2. to 4.2.

The U.S. Park Service evacuated and closed all monuments and memorials along the National Mall. The Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol and federal agencies in and around Washington were evacuated. Roads out of the city were clogged with commuters headed home.

At the majestic Washington National Cathedral, at least three of the four top stones on the central tower fell off, and cracks appeared in the flying buttresses at the cathedral's east end, the oldest part of the structure. The top of the Washington Monument has a crack.

Ceiling tiles fell to the floor at Reagan National Airport. The gothic-style Smithsonian Castle, built in 1857, had minor cracks and broken glass. And vigorous shaking left a crack and hole in the ceiling at historic Union Station when a chunk of plaster fell near the main entrance.

Maintenance workers at the U.S. Capitol and congressional office buildings have already repaired cracked plaster, chipped paint and missing ceiling tiles. Engineers found no major damage to any of the buildings, Architect of the Capitol spokeswoman Eva Malecki said.

On Wednesday a handful of federal buildings remained closed, including some offices of the Homeland Security, Agriculture and Interior departments.

Stressed-out D.C. mother of four Marion Babcock, who spent two hours in traffic instead of her normal 25 minutes, did the only sensible thing for her frazzled, frightened kids: "I treated their post-traumatic stress with copious amounts of chocolate mint and cookie dough ice cream."

Between cell phones and social networks, news of the quake seemed to travel faster than the temblor itself.

Jenna Scanlon of Floral Park, N.Y., ended a phone call with someone in McLean, Va., and announced to her office colleagues there had been an earthquake. Seconds later, 7 World Trade Center began to shake.

The scope of the damage — or lack of — also quickly became clear on social networks. Instead of collapsed freeways, people posted images of toppled lawn chairs and yogurt cups, broken Bobbleheads, picture frames askew on walls.

On Facebook, people joked with posts such as "S&P has downgraded earthquake to a 2.0," a swipe at the rating agency that recently lowered the federal government's creditworthiness. Another suggested New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a large man, had just "jumped into" the presidential race.

About 35 miles north of the epicenter in Culpeper, Va., officials were doing a building-by-building inspection of the downtown business district. Several historic buildings were damaged.

In West Virginia, environmental regulators sent engineers to inspect massive coal slurry dams that could wipe out entire communities if they were to fail and release billions of gallons of wastewater.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority said that checks of its dams and nuclear plants in several states had turned up no problems.

Amtrak said trains along the Northeast Corridor between Baltimore and Washington were operating at reduced speeds and crews were inspecting stations and railroad infrastructure before returning to normal.

Even those who knew what was happening had braced for worse, some remembering the Indian Ocean quake that triggered a tsunami and a nuclear disaster in Japan.

"I knew it was an earthquake, but my first thought was, `Oh my God, something's going to happen to the power plant," said 21-year-old Whitney Thacker in Mineral, Va., a town near the epicenter where the sidewalks were littered with fallen stones, masonry and broken glass. "It was scary."

Dominion Virginia Power shut down its two-reactor nuclear power plant within 10 miles of the quake's epicenter, but said there was no evidence of any damage to the decades-old North Anna Power Station.

By the standards of the West Coast, where earthquakes are much more common, the Virginia quake was mild. Since 1900, there have been 40 of magnitude 5.8 or greater in California alone.

But quakes in the East tend to be felt across a much broader area, the waves traveling "pretty happily out for miles," said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough.

The last quake of equal power to strike the East Coast was in New York in 1944. The largest East Coast quake on record was a 7.3 that hit South Carolina in 1886.

The fear in some places was real.

Michael Leman had been mowing a neighbor's lawn in Mineral when bricks began falling from a chimney and the earth heaved a large propane tank about a foot off the ground.

"I thought that tank was about to explode," he said, "and I ran for dear life."

___

Lewis reported from Mineral, and Smith from Morgantown, W.Va. Contributing to this report were: Zinie Chen Sampson in Mineral; Hank Kurz in Richmond; Larry Neumeister, Verena Dobnik and Adam Geller in New York; Seth Borenstein, Charles Babington, Stephen Ohlemacher, Eileen Sullivan, Mark Sherman, Jack Gillum, Lolita C. Baldor and Larry Margasak in Washington; Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco; and Tom Withers in Cleveland.

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U.S. alert as Hurricane Irene threatens East Coast (Reuters)

SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) – Hurricane Irene posed a potential threat to the entire U.S. East Coast from Florida to New England, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, as forecasters tried to predict where the powerful storm might hit over the next week.

U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate and National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read issued the warning as Irene swept up from the Caribbean on a northwest track toward the United States.

"We're going to have a very large tropical cyclone move up the Eastern Seaboard over the next five to seven days," Read told a conference call in which he spoke along with Fugate.

The FEMA chief said residents all along the East Coast should be alert not only to a potential direct landfall but also to the risk of torrential rains, high winds and flooding that Irene could bring.

"We're saying the entire East Coast," Fugate said.

Irene, now a Category 2 storm, was heading on Tuesday over the Turks and Caicos Islands and southeastern Bahamas. It was expected to become a major Category 3 storm, with winds over 111 mph, by Wednesday and could possibly intensify further to a Category 4 as it neared the southeast U.S. coast by Friday.

Calling Irene a "very large storm," Read said the Miami-based NHC's "best guess" forecast at the moment was that the hurricane would approach the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday morning as a major storm, of Category 3 or upward on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity.

Read said the storm will skirt south Florida but added that after the Carolinas, the New England region of the East Coast could also be at particular risk.

"We're going to potentially see tropical storm-force conditions, very hazardous beach conditions," Fugate said, adding evacuations of coastal areas could be needed.

Irene, the first hurricane of the busy 2011 Atlantic season, looks set to be the first hurricane to hit the United States since Ike pounded the Texas coast in 2008.

At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Irene had top winds of 100 miles per hour and was 70 miles south of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos and 50 miles north northwest of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Hurricane force winds extended outward up to 50 miles from Irene's center and tropical storm force winds extended out up to 205 miles, the NHC said.

(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton and Tom Brown in Miami, Reuters in San Juan: Ben Berkowitz in New York; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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China protests U.S. spy flights near its coast (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) – China warned that recent U.S. surveillance flights near its coast have severely harmed mutual trust and were a major obstacle to better military ties between the two countries, state media reported Wednesday.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed Monday to press ahead with surveillance flights near China despite opposition from Beijing, after an intercept by Chinese fighter jets of a U.S. spy plane on June 29.

"We demand that the U.S. respect China's sovereignty and security interests and take concrete measures to boost a healthy and stable development of military relations," the Global Times newspaper quoted the Ministry of National Defense as saying.

Xinhua news agency later quoted ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng as saying the reconnaissance missions "have severely undermined mutual trust and remained a major obstacle to the development of military ties.

There have been conflicting accounts of where the June 29 incident happened.

Taiwan's defense ministry said Monday that two Chinese fighter jets briefly crossed a line in the center of the Taiwan Strait that is considered an unofficial boundary between the airspace of both sides.

The fighter jets were attempting to intercept a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane, according to Asian media reports.

But the Pentagon said Wednesday the June 29 Chinese intercept did not take place in the center of the Taiwan Strait. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it happened in international airspace over the East China Sea, north of Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait.

Regardless, relations between the U.S. and Chinese militaries have been rocky. China is unhappy with U.S. reconnaissance patrols near its coast and is suspicious of U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan.

China's rapid military buildup, including its growing aircraft carrier program, and its territorial disputes in the South China Sea have sparked concerns in the region.

The United States wants greater military transparency from Beijing over the military modernization and has warned about China's growing missile and cyber capabilities.

Self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as part of its sovereign territory, has been another major irritant in military relations. China has been furious about a 2010 package of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan worth up to $6.4 billion.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Ron Popeski and John O'Callaghan)

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