Irene Blog: Business Impact

Monday, 8/29/11 5:56 AM/ET: Irene Downgraded Again

It appears that Canada will be spared most of the damage that Irene inflicted on New York and points south.

The National Hurricane Center downgraded Irene to a post-tropical cyclone as it approached the border with Canada. The storm's maximum sustained winds declined to around 50 miles per hour.

Late on Sunday local time, Irene lashed Vermont with heavy rain, forcing evacuations and causing streams to breach their banks. A local emergency spokesman told Reuters that the swollen waterways would probablly be an issue "for the next 24 hours." As many as 50,000 people lost power as the storm roared through their state.

The rest of New England also absorbed damage and encountered power and transportation problems, with 650,000 homes and businesses losing electricity in Massachusetts alone. Overall, however, the damage to New England was less than had been feared.

Sunday, 8/28/11 9:50 PM/ET: Some Damages to Popular Seaside Towns, but Authorities Say 'Not as Bad'

Getty Images Susan Petrella, lower left, stands near the King Neptune statue as the first wind and rain of Hurricane Irene blow in on August 27, 2011 in Virginia Beach, VA.

Irene damages some beaches along the Atlantic coast and popular seaside towns. Heavy concrete benches on New Jersey's historic boardwalk in Asbury Park were upended, residents say. But the city's governor Chris Christie says damage wasn't "as bad" as expected. Polic reopened the isaland on Sunday afternoon and evacuation orders were lifted.

Atlantic City, which fared well in the storm, will also be ready for the return of tourists, authorities say. 

Sunday, 8/28/11 7:10 PM/ET: NYC Airports & Port Authority to Resume Operations

John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports will open to arriving flights at 6 a.m. Monday, Aug. 29, with departures set to resume at noon.  LaGuardia Airport will reopen to both arrivals and departures at 7 a.m. tomorrow.

The Port Authority has coordinated the reopenings with the Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and our airline partners. 

Sunday, 8/28/11 6:21 PM/ET: Downgraded From Hurricane

Getty Images Large waves from Hurricane Irene pound the Ocean City pier, on August 28, 2011 in Ocean City, Maryland.

The Northeast was spared the urban nightmare some had worried about -- crippled infrastructure, stranded people and windows blown out of skyscrapers. But there was still plenty to watch out for. In Rhode Island, which has a geography thick with bays, inlets and shoreline, authorities were worried about coastal flooding at evening high tide.

Sunday, 8/28/11 4:35 PM/ET: Obama Will Speak at 5PM ET

Mandel Ngan |AFP | Getty Images A fallen tree which also knocked over a power line is seen on Loughboro Road after Hurricane Irene swept through the area.

The President will make a statement on the hurricane early this evening.

Sunday, 8/28/11 3:59 PM/ET: Atlantic City Casinos to Reopen Monday

Atlantic City's casinos report little damage from Hurricane Irene, and the 11 gambling halls will reopen Monday at noon after being shuttered for the weekend.

Sunday, 8/28/11 3:59 PM/ET: Cars Floating Free—Flood Video From Vermont

Downtown Brattleboro is completely flooded as the rivers flowing through the town break their banks.

UPDATE: Additional footage of the flooding in Brattleboro.

Sunday, 8/28/11 3:59 PM/ET: NYC Buses, PATH Trains to Resume

Limited MTA bus service will resume at 4:30 PM Sunday afternoon. PATH trains will resume operations at 4 AM Monday morning.

UPDATE: (Bus service) restoration will begin in Manhattan and the Bronx, followed by Queens and Brooklyn. Conditions in Staten Island continue to prevent restoration of service at this time. No fares will be charged for service provided today.

Sunday, 8/28/11 3:27 PM/ET: Philadelphia is Hard Hit

In Philadelphia, which lies between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, residents in low-lying areas woke up to rising water. Mark McDonald, spokesman for the Philadelphia mayor, Michael Nutter, said water levels were 15 feet above normal in some areas, and were not expected to stop rising until 2 p.m. Sunday.

Sunday, 8/28/11 1:30 PM/ET: NYC Mass Transit Still Assessing Damage

Getty Images Plastic tape blocks the entrance to the Chambers St subway station.

New York City’s public transportation system remained paralyzed on Sunday afternoon even after Hurricane Irene moved away from the city, and the authorities expected a lengthy and protracted recovery that would most likely leave many commuters stranded on Monday morning.

Sunday, 8/28/11 1:24 PM/ET: Nasdaq Will Open Monday

Nasdaq will open all exchanges normally on Monday.

Sunday, 8/28/11 12:58 PM/ET: Power is Returning

Photo: Gennine Kelly for CNBC

Utility workers fanned out throughout the East Coast to fix downed electrical lines and restore power to millions of people left in the dark by Hurricane Irene.

Power is returning to thousands of customers in the southern coastal states, the first area hit by Irene on Saturday. But more than 4 million people remain without electricity along the Eastern Seaboard.

Sunday, 8/28/11 12:20 PM/ET: PSE&G says 5-7 days until power is restored in NJ

New Jersey power provider PSE&G said Sunday it may take five to seven days to restore power to 330,000 customers in the state after Tropical Storm Irene pummeled the U.S. East Coast, leading to widespread power outages in the region.
Some 3.6 million customers were without power on the East Coast Sunday morning, according to data from companies.

Sunday, 8/28/11 12:03 PM/ET: DC Flights Resume, Trains and Subways Still Uncertain

Story here:

Federal officials said airports reopened around Washington, which took a glancing blow from Irene. American Airlines said it was resuming flights at the three major airports around the capital.

Stan Honda | AFP | Getty Images The Wall Street bronze Bull looks out to an empty Broadway in Lower Manhattan, New York, early August 28, 2011 as Hurricane Irene hits the city and Tri State area with rain and high winds.

New York-area airports remained closed on Sunday morning. The longer that New York's Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J., airports are shuttered, the worse it will be as travel delays ripple across the country. Federal officials said they didn't know when the airports would reopen, noting that mass transit in New York remained shut down, making it difficult for airport employees and passengers to reach the airports.

Sunday, 8/28/11 11:15 AM/ET: Power A Primary Concern for East Coast

Power is returning for hundreds of thousands of people after Hurricane Irene passed through coastal states in the South.

Repair crews rushed out in Virginia, the Carolinas and Maryland Sunday after Irene turned north. An enormous job lies ahead. Irene flooded power stations, toppled trees and tore down electrical wires. More than four million homes and businesses are still without power.

In Manhattan, Consolidated Edison said it was optimistic that it wouldn't need to cut power to the financial district. So far, sensitive underground power lines haven't been flooded, the company says.

Sunday, 8/28/11 11:14 AM/ET: NC Nuke Plants Back Up

Progress Energy said on Sunday it will bring units at its North Carolina Brunswick nuclear plant back to full power in the coming 24 to 36 hours as tropical storm Irene weakened near New York after battering the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast.

"Now that the storm has passed and the grid in the Progress Energy service area has stabilized, we will be slowly bringing both Brunswick units back to full power," spokesman Ryan Mosier said.

Sunday, 8/28/11 11:10 AM/ET: NYC Exchange Update

Timothy Clary | AFP | New York A security guard near the sand bagged front entrance of the New York Stock Exchange August 27, 2011. New York City ordered more than 300,000 people who live in flood-prone areas to evacuate as Hurricane Irene is forecast to reach the city.

Exchanges plan to open as normal on Monday

Sunday, 8/28/11 10:43 AM/ET: NYC's Latest

New York's utility Consolidated Edison said that flooding is not as bad as anticipated in lower Manhattan, and hasn't decided whether to cut power or not. The Coast Guard says it expects to operate normally in New York harbor tomorrow.

Sunday, 8/28/11 9:11 AM/ET: Center of Irene Rolls Over Queens; Storm Downgraded

Timothy Clary | AFP | Getty Images A New York City Police car drives through a flooded intersection on 43nd Street in New York on August 28, 2011 as Hurricane Irene hits the city and Tri State area with rain and high winds.

The very center of Irene has reached New York City, with the eye of the storm itself apparently narrowly missing Manhattan but pushing out over the New York borough of Queens. Still, footage continues to show at least a moderate surge of shin-deep water from New York harbor encroaching on Manhattan's Battery Park area.

The storm was downgraded by the U.S. National Hurricane Center to a tropical storm, with winds of 65 miles per hour.

Sunday, 8/28/11 8:46 AM/ET: Closing on NYC, Irene Spawns Flooding, Tornadoes

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says that Hurricane Irene will bring a storm surge of up to 8 feet and rainfall of up to 15 inches as it approaches New York City over the coming hours. The NHC alsoo predicted isolated tornadoes in the area.

Irene is a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds near 75 miles per hour.

Sunday, 8/28/11 6:21 AM/ET: Another Landfall

Hurricane Irene has made another landfall, this time on Sunday morning on the New Jersey Coast at Little Egg Inlet, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Landfall came at about 5:35 a.m. local time. Winds were at 75 miles per hour, the NHC said.

Sunday, 8/28/11 5:29 AM/ET:  Winds Could Make Problems for High-Rises

Hurricane Irene may wreak worse damage in New York City than it has further south because of the city’s heavy concentration of high-rise buildings, according to Internet weather forecasting service, Weather Underground.

The forecaster writes that the category one storm is unusual because her wind speed increases sharply with height above ground level. Consequently, high-rise buildings could experience significantly stronger winds, with speeds 20 percent faster at 30-stories above ground, and 30 percent faster at 80-to-100 stories.

Weather Underground forecasts that Irene will reach southern New England by this afternoon local time, before moving into eastern Canada by nightfall.

Sunday, 8/28/11 5:00 AM/ET: Latest From National Hurricane Center

Timothy Clary | AFP | Getty Images A MTA worker prepares to lock the gates at Union Square station as the city’s entire mass transit system beginning at noon will shut down on August 27, 2011 to prepare for Hurricane Irene.

Irene has made her way to an area 15 miles south-southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., and is expected to pass near New York City to the east before bearing back inland across southern New England, according to the latest bulletin from Miami's National Hurricane Center.

Irene now bears maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and is moving north-northeast at 18 miles per hour.

A tropical storm warning has been issued for areas as far north as the south coast of Nova Scotia. "Interests elsewhere in eastern Canada should monitor the progress of Irene," the NHC bulletin said.

Sunday, 8/28/11 2:26 AM/ET: Irene Cuts Power to 20,000 NYC Customers

The early rains of Hurricane Irene have cut power to almost 20,000 customers in New York City on Sunday.

According to Consolidated Edison, Staten Island was the hardest hit borough with 8,402 homes and businesses without power, while Queens and Brooklyn both had between 3,000 and 5,000 experiencing blackouts. Just 15 customers in Manhattan were without power at 2:01 a.m. EDT.

In all, nearly 2 million customers are now without power in the northeast, with the biggest outages reported by Dominion in Virginia, where 820,000 customers are without power, followed by Baltimore, where nearly 300,000 BGE (Constellation

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Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center says the eye of the storm is now about 195 miles (315 km) south-southwest of New York City and is moving north-northeast at 17 mph (28 kph).

Saturday, 8/27/11 11:52 PM/ET: NYC Transit Shutdown Complete

New York Transit officials say they have now completed the shutdown of the entire system of commuter trains, buses and the subway, according to the AP. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said it had secured all its equipment and sent all its employees home in an unprecedented shutdown of the largest transport network in the United States.

It's unclear when the system will run again. The MTA says even if damage is minimal, restoring service "will be a lengthy process." And flooding, mudslides, fallen trees and downed power lines could dramatically complicate the work.

Mayor Bloomberg warned a few hours ago that the outer edges of Irene had reached the city and it was no longer safe to be outdoors.

Saturday, 8/27/11 7:42 PM/ET: Update - ConocoPhillips Will Shut

Ted Richardson | Bloomberg | Getty Images Boats sit out of the water at Pamlico Sound in Buxton, North Carolina, on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011. Hurricane Irene made landfall on the North Carolina coast this morning after a night of driving rain and wind in a storm that forced evacuations along the Eastern Seaboard.

CNBC's Sharon Epperson reports: ConocoPhillips has shut down its 238,000 barrel-per-day Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, as a precaution ahead of Hurricane Irene. Terminals are shutting down until it is safe to resume operations. Energy News Today Inc reports the 145,000 barrel per day "catcracker", a gasoline-making unit, and part of the crude unit have halted operation. Conoco's 185,000 barrel per day refinery in Trainer, PA is still operating.

Saturday, 8/27/11 7:20 PM/ET: Irene Storms Northward After Pounding North Carolina

From NY Times: Hurricane Irene Pushes North With Deadly Force

After several anxious days of dire forecasts that forced much of the East Coast into unprecedented levels of lockdown, a weakened but still ferocious Hurricane Irene made landfall on Saturday morning along the southern coast of North Carolina and began its gradual, destructive move up the East Coast, contributing to the deaths of at least five people.

Announcing itself with howling winds and hammering rains, the hurricane made landfall at Cape Lookout, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, around 7:30, which instantly became urgent news hundreds of miles north, in the battened-down cities of Washington, Baltimore and, especially, New York, where city officials took the unprecedented steps of evacuating low-lying areas and shutting down the mass transit system.

Click here to read the full story and to see an amazing rescue photo.

Saturday, 8/27/11 6:41 PM/ET: Obama Pays Visit to FEMA

From the White House:

"At FEMA's National Response Coordination Center today, the President participated in a video teleconference (VTC) where he heard operational updates from governors and emergency managers in impacted areas along the east coast including (in order of update based on FEMA regions) North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

Getty Images Denis Hromin stands on a pier to get a picture of the beach during Hurricane Irene August 27, 2011 in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Hurricane Irene hit Dare County, which sits along the Outer Banks and includes the vacation towns of Nags Head, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills.

These VTCs are held daily during major federal responses, and have been conducted since Monday in advance of Hurricane Irene. The President’s participation had not been previously announced.

These VTCs are attended by Governors or their designated representatives as well as federal agencies involved in the response. Governors participating in the VTC and conducting updates for their states included Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

Governors and state representatives thanked the President for the emergency declarations that have been granted to support preparations and emergency response efforts. Those pre-landfall emergency declarations to date include; North Carolina, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland and an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico (Aug 22).

The President also asked states if there were any unmet needs, and while no immediate additional requirements were identified, he directed Administrator Fugate and Secretary Napolitano to continue to remain vigilant as we move into the next phase of this storm, including additional sheltering needs as the storm progressed."

Saturday, 8/27/11 6:30 PM/ET: Tracking Irene

Wanna see where Irene is right now - click here - The New York Times has a great map.

Saturday, 8/27/11 4:27 PM/ET: Stores Closed, New Yorkers Still Shopping

Photo: Bob Pisani for CNBC

Many stores in New York were closed on Saturday as Hurricane Irene neared, with some posting signs like "Blame the weatherman. Not us." But New York's shopping districts still were bustling as people piled into any store that was open.

Saturday, 8/27/11 4:27 PM/ET: NYSE Expects Normal Trading Monday

After completing additional reviews ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Irene, the New York Stock Exchange repeated over the weekend that it expects to conduct a normal trading session on Monday.

Saturday, 8/27/11 3:01 PM/ET: NYT State-By-State Social Media Kit

Here’s a state-by-state social media guide for news and conversation. It is a work in progress and we will be updating it throughout the day and weekend. You will also find some great mobile apps to help you navigate during the storm.

Saturday, 8/27/11 2:38 PM/ET: Conoco Operating, Slows Output

ConocoPhillips said on Saturday its two East Coast refineries continue to operate but that personnel have made preparations for potential winds and water from Hurricane Irene.

ConocoPhillips operates the 185,000 barrel per day refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia.

Sources familar with refinery operations there say rates have been cut ahead of the storm.