Via: WRAL.com
Irene brought 85-mph winds, gusts up to 115 mph and heavy rain Saturday as it passed near the Crystal Coast. Today, most of NC is dealing with the hundreds of thousands without power, hundreds of closed roads and the downed trees.
The storm’s biggest impacts appear to be extensive power outages; coastal flooding, particularly along the sounds and rivers; and downed trees from the coast to the Triangle.
Officials sadi the total cost of Irene’s passage won’t be known for weeks but some experts think the grand total could be somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars area.
Around 300,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina were without power Sunday morning – down from nearly 1 million at the peak of the outages Saturday
