WASHINGTON — Already a killer storm, Hurricane Irene sloshed into the New York metropolitan area Sunday, adhering to a course that pushed mountains of seawater – and vast volumes of rain – into the city, many of its suburbs and much of the surrounding region.
“The flooding will be epic and there will be water in places you never dreamed,” said forecaster Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Even before Irene reached one of the nation’s most heavily populated regions, at least eight deaths were attributed to the storm, a summer weekend terror that clung to, ravaged and swamped the East Coast from North Carolina all the way to New England.
Outages cut power to more than 2 million customers, complicating efforts to prepare for or recover from the storm.
