Hurricanes, Natural Disaster | featured news

With Hurricane Irene pointed at the nation's most populated city, expected to arrive by late Saturday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants coastal residents to get moving. Now. City officials made the unprecedented decision to shut down the mass transit system starting at noon Saturday and to evacuate by 5 p.m. more than 250,000 New Yorkers who live along the southern coastal rim of the city. That includes residents of Manhattan's Battery Park City, vast parts of Staten Island, Brooklyn's Howard and Manhattan beaches and everyone in the beachfront communities of Rockaway.

New York became the latest state to declare a state of emergency in a scramble to get ahead of Hurricane Irene as the storm prepares to make a potentially deadly drive up the East Coast. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's declaration Thursday follows those of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue - whose state is projected to take the first hit Saturday when Hurricane Irene makes landfall in the U.S. - limited her declaration to counties east of Interstate 95.

Virginia officials warned residents on Thursday to prepare for massive power outages, flooding and damage from Hurricane Irene comparable to that of Hurricane Isabel, which knocked out power to about 2 million people as it tore through the state in 2003.

With Hurricane Irene approaching, evacuations began on a tiny barrier island off North Carolina early Wednesday in a test of whether people in the crosshairs of the first serious hurricane along the East Coast in years would heed orders to get out of the way....

How's the start of the Atlantic hurricane season compared to past years?

Hurricane Earl made landfall in Canada on Saturday and fizzled after a series of scares along the U.S. East Coast, flooding roads, felling trees and cutting power to tens of thousands in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.

Federal forecasters today called for an "active" to "extremely active" hurricane season this year, with anywhere from 14 to 23 named storms expected ...

El Salvador declares an emergency in five regions after at least 40 people die in floods in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

Officials urge the public to take precautions at the tip of the peninsula in Mexico. An OECD tax meeting that was to be held in Los Cabos is moved to Mexico City, out of the storm's likely path.

With winds of 115 mph, Hurricane Jimena has Mexico's Baja California peninsula in its sights. The Category 3 storm is expected to to moved toward Baja California, according to the National Hurricane Center.