Power Outage, Natural Disaster | featured news

A religious statue stands in the fire-scorched landscape of Breezy Point after a Nor'easter snow, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012 in New York. The beachfront neighborhood was devastated during Superstorm Sandy when a fire pushed by the raging winds destroyed many homes.

Electrons work for free, except, of course in major storms -- as several prominent websites discovered... Lost sites beginning [Monday] night included the Huffington Post, Gawker and the blog Mediaite. Huffington Post was back by Tuesday morning, but the site was a bit skimpier. According to a statement posted on a website of the more traditional kind, CBS News, the problem seemed to be flooding.

Monster Storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast Monday, killing at least 16 people, hurling a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City and knocking out power to more than 7.5 million across the East Coast.

Isaac crawled into the nation's midsection early Friday, leaving a soggy mess in Louisiana. Neighborhoods were underwater, and many homes that stayed dry didn't have lights, air conditioning or clean water....

Across the Midwest and up and down the East Coast, millions of people are living without power. And they are not happy about it. More than 900,000 households remain without power early Wednesday in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio, the states hardest hit by the storm Friday night that packed 80-mph winds.

More than 2.1 million people from Illinois to Virginia remained without power Monday morning after violent storms struck over the weekend, and a heat wave continued to blanket much of the region.

About 3.5 million customers were without power in the eastern United States on Saturday amid a record heat wave after deadly thunderstorms knocked down trees and power lines from Indiana to New Jersey.

Violent winds that wreaked havoc in Western states eased Friday but hundreds of thousands of people remained without power and crews struggled to clean up smashed trees, toppled power lines and debris-strewn roadways....

Some of the worst winds in years blasted the West overnight, knocking down trees and power lines in California and toppling trucks and forcing some schools to close as gusts reached 102 mph in Utah.

Hurricane Irene knocked out power to nearly 1 million customers in Virginia; it was being restored in some areas today. Dominion Virginia Power said on its website early Sunday that more than 973,000 of its more than 2.4 million customers were without power Sunday morning.