here on msnbc. 10:00 a.m. here on the east coast, 7:00 a.m. out west. we're most concerned about the east coast now. lady liberty is keeping an eye out for hurricane irene definitely heading her way. we have reports of rain in the area. perhaps from those outer bands.

this is a massive storm, hurricane irene. looks like some sort of ditch is being built there to deal with some potential storm surge. we've also seen people taking plywood, boarding up their windows and a lot of people moving their boats. very wisely out of the local marinas and getting them to safety. good morning, everyone. i'm alex witt. we have you covered from north carolina where hurricane irene officially made landfall about two and a half hours ago now. it's officially a category 1 hurricane. they had a 5-mile-per-hour decrease in winds. this is a huge storm, and there's the potential for a lot of dangerous activity. on the heels of that, let's go to nbc meteorologist jeff frenery. good morning. >> it's hitting quite hard here across the outer banks, and it's a real, you know, excellent example for a lot of folks in

new york city and along the atlantic seaboard on why they need to be prepared for this and evacuate if they're asked. the storm moved and made the first landfall near cape lookout in north carolina. those wind speeds have been constantly in the 70 to 80-mile-per-hour range in cape hatteras. right now gusting at 87 miles per hour, and we see quite a bit of wind moving into our inland sections as well this remains a very strong category 1 hurricane approximate in all respects. it's going to move across the cape here and keep its strength as that category 1 with winds that fan out here 90 miles from the center of the storm. so that is going to enable similar instances of what we see right now all up and down the mid-atlantic coastline right into the new england area. right now winds 85 miles per hour, but that central pressure very, very strong. 952 millibars with tropical

storm-force winds extends out 250 miles from the center of the storm as we see some outer rain bands moving into new york city. hurricane warnings all the way into the cape for massachusetts. we have seen no sign of change in this at this point. as we move on here to the path and what we can expect on this next point, we want to underscore that north carolina is seeing the worst of it right now. as we head into tonight it's about delaware, maryland and new jersey with some of the largest impacts from 4:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. 4 to 8 inches of rain possible and 3 to 6 foot storm surge. the snex stop is new england into long island impacting new york city possibly with big-time effects. storm surge 3 to 6 feet is the potential there, and also rainfall totals anywhere from 4 to 8 inches and winds i look at the hourly tabulars. they expect to hold up in new york city anywhere from 60 to 70 miles per hour. we also want to pinpoint here

it's been saturated across the east coast. you have heard this time and again. look at this bull's eye. this weather map paints the story of what will happen when it comes to rainfall. already all-time record setting rain throughout philadelphia, in pennsylvania, and now we talk about another 6 to 8 inches there. inland river flooding could be the secondary story throughout next week as well once we get through the wind. any hope of this changing course heading way out to stooe or heading more off to the west? not at all. look at these computer models. all pointing directly towards the same exact path it has been for the past three days or sore. very consistent, and it was very unusual for a hurricane this size as this path is expected to continue up the atlantic seaboard. he we get our next update in one hour, so when that happens, of course, we have all the full information it will have any directional changes on the path, and really the latest all the way down to the heart of the

storm. >> you know what's interesting, jeff, is you talk about this intention of having it stay on course and keep its velocity there because so often once these hurricanes hit land, they do weaken and dissipate and break apart. maybe perhaps it's going up the coast. is that why hurricane irene is keeping its force? >> exactly, alex. because it's sitting right near those warm atlantic waters. temperatures in the 70s and 80s. as it hitsed land and meets friction and breaks down a little bit, but it gets more fuel from the right side of the storm. it basically reinvigorating this storm up the mid-atlantic coastline. when you look back historically, there might not ever have been a storm to potentially take this path. it's definitely going to be historic when all is said and done despite the faktd that many might say it's a category 1. it's a very deceiving on some levels category 1 storm. >> it's huge is what it is.

jeff, stay with us right now. we'll go to tom costello. tom, i understand you've seen a tremendous deterioration of the weather conditions in the last hour there. >> reporter: yeah, and i'd love to bring jeff in on this. let me orient our viewers. if you go off of my left hand, that's the south down towards north carolina, that's up towards new york, behind me is the atlantic ocean. we have seen a dramatic pickup in just the last hour. i have winds averaging 20 miles per hour. when we stepped out an hour ago, we were 10 maybe. the ocean has really started churning, and what's interesting here, jeff, and i'd love to know why and i'm sure you can explain it, the rain and wind are coming out of the north. i'm getting pelting on the north side of my face here and the wind is hitting us. this is how the storm is churning in the ocean. >> most certainly, tom. it's kind of shifting and

tilting a little bit inward, so you get the outer rain bands from the north down to the south. really the largest impact we're seeing is on that top side of the storm that you're already starting to feel the impacts of. it is those outer rain bands, but it's the way it's all positioned and you're going to get pretty good rainfall over the next three to four hours as everything continues to intensify. if you can see the screen right now, i'm sure you would definitely maybe even be thinking twice about standing out there. i've been out there and done this many times as well myself. >> reporter: well, i can assure i'm not going to stand in this position for the next 12 hours. i'll move at some point. we wanted to it make the point the ocean is churning up behind us, and we've been hearing to expect 80, 85 miles per hour and the local officials here are ultimately expecting 10 to 12 inches of rain and significant flooding here, which is a real problem, of course, when you're

at beach level as ocean city is. there isn't any higher ground here, or at least not a lot of that. people have obviously moved inland. we have an exodus off of the ocean city area over the last 48 hours, and it's now a ghost town here. there's nobody else up and down the peninsula at all, especially in ocean city. i did economcheck with the loca police departments a while ago. they have no reports of injuries or deaths, which is a good thing under any circumstance but especially because yesterday we had surfers too tempted by what they saw out there. today they're all away. that's too dangerous today. it really is interesting how the storm is to our south, and yet we get hit by the rain coming in from the north. the meteorology there is awfully interesting. back to you. >> yeah, i know we've had, you know, your colleague just to the

south of you there, we had mark potter talking about the one, two, three punch. we often here about the one, two. but he said it could be a one, two, three punch out of the storm, which is pretty significant. with regard to ocean city, though, tom, when you talk about the evacuations that were required, how many people seem to have defied those? do you see the presence of residents there? >> reporter: no, i don't see -- i literally all morning i've seen two people who were not associated with the news media or emergency services. the emergency services are driving up and down the beach to make absolutely sure nobody is out there. they give us a wave and move on. i haven't seen anybody else. i think it's been extremely effective. >> jeff, what comes ahead there for tom costello? he's feeling it coming from both sides, he's getting the effects of things. is that par for the course in a storm like this? >> it definitely is. on the current track that we're

seeing, it's hard to pinpoint exactly in terms of the course when it gets to maryland, but we know it's going to pass over maryland. if cape hatteras is any indication of what's happening there now, they've had five hours in a row of hurricane-force winds that have not wavered at all. to if that's any indication, a lot of our coastal cities are going to be seeing this long duration, strong wind event that is going to hit a lot of those vulnerable coastlines that has not seen a hurricane at least at this magnitude when you look at the different layers of this storm. >> okay. all right. jeff, i know you're not going too far from your post. thank you very much. we've got our thanks to tom costello. i understand we have mike sieidl out of nags city, north carolina. look at you, mike. can you hear me.

you're standing up okay? >> good morning from nags head. we're still getting battered. the worst is still yet to come. the center of irene is still down just north and northeast of xap lookout. that's down to the south-southwest. we have a good three or four more hours of this. the winds will get stronger. there are dangerous-looking bandses that will come at us right near the center of irene. we don't have a true eye anymore, but once that comes over, the winds will back off and the sky wit brighten. these winds are over 60 miles per hour. i'm also getting sandblasted, which is kind of painful, and the rain is blowing horizontal. look at some of these homes here. again, they are hanging in there. what you can't see is as the wind gets channelled between buildings here, some of these homes, i can see now that large sections of board and siding have been ripped off and blown off the homes. there's going to be -- there goes part of the roof, part of

the shingles, not part of the roof. you can see how even though high tide was more than three hours ago, the water is being -- almost four hours ago, the water is still extremely high. as the center approaches, we'll get the surge between 5 and 8 feet. we've got -- we still have to deal with that. there's a wind gust. that's got to be pushing 70 miles per hour. it's a wild morning on the outer banks, and we're not out of the woods yet. we still have power. the only thing we lost was cable. some of this is heading certainly up the coast towards the jersey shore in new york city. we expect the hurricane to weaken some. you're still going to have problems with beach erosion, the wind and rain and the power outages inland, alex. i can't look at the camera. the sand is pelting me in the face right now. hopefully they'll get everything back open and get everybody back here well in time for labor day

weekend. you can sense how powerful. this is just a category 1 hurricane. a category 1. keep that in mind. not a 2 or 3, xh we thought would be possible. so we're breathing easier for the fact it is not as strong, but it's such a big storm the winds spread out that we have issues up the coast as you well know. alex. >> mike, you are to be applauded right there. it's absolutely compelling. look at that, jeff. he's using the wet sand and the water there to almost anchor him down so he doesn't get blown over. 70-mile-per-hour winds. this is category 1, and people think just a category 1. look at that. there's nothing oh about it. >> it would be hard to tell, take a look at this picture, where is he at? it's hard to tell because the wind-whipped waves and the sand and everything combining together. it's unbelievable. >> yeah. i can't believe what he's doing there for us.

let's hope he finds safety as soon as he needs to, though. a lot of people watching would say he should have got there already. >> we have the radar up right now, and what you see is we're tracking some really heavy rainfall as we saw in the picture, but some continuous rainfall right across nags head right where mike is at this point. they were under tornado watch earlier, and, in fact, in columbia, nearby columbia over here we did hear about two homes that were destroyed and also some minor injuries come inning fr from a tornado this morning. >> but, jeff, can i ask you, has the eye of the storm even gotten to nags head. do we know where it is in perspective with the entire hurricane? >> yeah, the center eye is pretty ragged at this point. overall it's -- i would say it's just off to the west of where mike is. so he's really in co-centric

bands around the center of the storm where everything is wound up really tightly, and you know that's why we're seeing mike right now standing up in this and somehow bracing himself. one thing i wanted to reiterate, alex, is the fact that this is the perfect example of how this category 1 storm really isn't even like a category 1 storm on so many levels because we rate the storms on the wind speed. 85 miles per hour, it's a category 1. if you look at all the other different factors with this storm, this definitely could rate a category 2. we're talking about category 2-size storm surges, category 2-size rainfall. >> we've 115 mooi-mile-per-hours reported, so we have to keep all this in mind. these figures and stats could be deceiving looking at that picture to the right. it's clear as to why it could be deceiving. stay with me as we head to battery park. that's where peter alexander is

watching things for us. peter, i don't know if you can see our colleague there from the weather channel, mike seidel, but what was most disturbing is he said these winds are heading straight for the jersey shore and the new york area. >> reporter: we know that we are in line. it's going to be here before the end. day. the truth is, alex, within the last 15 minutes or so we felt the first rain bands of irene. to give you a sense, that's 10:00 in the morning. we experience stuff a whole lot stronger than this into tomorrow as well. so we're just getting started here. you can see the water behind us. this is new york harbor, and the real reason this is such a big concern is because this whole area here is a low-lying area. that makes it a concern because the tidal surge is going to be taking place at the same time as the storm surge. according to the army corps of engineers in a cat 2, 500 million tons of water.

it isn't just water but the massive sky scrapers. if we bring the camera around, we give you a sense of that iconic new york city land cape. those glass skyscrapers that you see, one of the real concerns is that the wind gusts and the winds that come through this area. now, they're going to break glass potentially and shatter glass, sending it down like debris showering the streets below, not to mention the trees and other debris that could be showered throughout this area and used as projectile missiles. the reason this is challenging is because there's no real place to go for a lot of people. the evacuation orders as we have noted are in place for the first time ever for 375,000 new yorkers, mass transit shutting down about an hour and a half from now. that means no trains, no buses, no subways whatsoever. to give you a sense, 5 million people, new yorkers and tourists use the subway system here each day. that is out. if it's flooded with water, which the corps of engineers

said could take place in a cat 2 in roughly 40 minutes, so here it may take longer. if it does happen this could be a significant issue several days into next week as well. alex. >> let's show the difference between you and where mike seidel is battling things. this is one big storm, and there's a little bit of rain, correct, peter, where you are? which means outer, outer bands of this huge hurricane irene are already beginning to be felt there in the new york city area. >> reporter: you're right. that is exactly what the concern is. we're going to be in this for a while. rain totals have been estimated as much as a foot in places in and around new york city. i was speaking to a colleague on long island saying they are experiencing those outer rain bands for the first time as well. to give you a sense now, it's not just transit on the ground affected. air travel just two hours from now, they will stop allowing incoming flights, alex, at 9:00 this evening, we have learned they will no longer allow

flights to go out. people have to hunker down in and around this area. if you're on manhattan island and elsewhere relying on bridges, we're told by officials here if the wind speeds get to 40 miles per hour they may knee restrictions to travel over bridges. if they get to 60 miles per hour, they may close them out completely. find where you need to be right now and get into place. we'll have a light rain for a while and people will be kept skal. this afternoon and evening it will pick up. >> with regard to evacuating, you talk about the 375,000 in the low-lying area. by what time must that be done? >> reporter: they want that to happen right now. the mayor tweeted out a short time ago people should be out by now, and if they aren't this is the last chance to do it. they hope those evacuations happen by noon today. the reason it has to happen by noon is in a city where so many people are carless, the whole mass transit system will shut

down. you won't find a taxi. it's us, a few sea gulls and a couple of curious tourists. we have made it clear to them, they'd be wise to find an american television and move to a safe place. >> we're paying attention to you, peter alexander. thank you. a lot of people are paying attention to the tweet deck. look at our twitter deck right now, we're using the hash tag irene, it is completely full. we're going through all the tweets from people, but apparently this is the top things on the minds of those using social media right now. we'll pull up some of the best tweets of the day. jam-packed full. we appreciate you sending them to us. send them to us. we'll get to those and a whole lot more. stay with us. [ male announcer ] get ready for the left lane. the volkswagen autobahn for all event is back. right now, get a great deal on new volkswagen models, including the cc.

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now. she's at north carolina, and she's on her way to virginia and barreling herself up the eastern seaboard. we go to new york city. that is lady liberty overlooking the harbor about 400 miles or so away from nags head, north carolina. they've seen tremendous pain and pounding surf, but the winds are the topic there. that is our colleague from the weather channel mike seidel that has to use the wet sand as an anchor to keep himself buffeted badly by the winds. he's battling 70-mile-per-hour winds. the last couple of minutes he couldn't face the camera because the sand blown in his face is too painful. we head to luke russert. they look fining in alex andrea, virginia there. i have concerns about the boat owners there, luke. with those winds and waves coming their way, you'd think

the boats would be out of the water by now. >> reporter: yeah, alex, the rain has started in the d.c. area and is expected to continue. since i last spoke to you, a lot of boat owners are moving their vessel foss flos to the floatin. this boat owner here mike said he's going to triple tie the ropes and put floaties out and hang ten, if you will to keep it here. as for d.c. and virginia as of right now we believe there's over 25,000 people without power in southern virginia. washington, d.c. is in a state of emergency as is alexandria as is the entire state of virginia. they're in full hurricane preparation. there's a lot of tourists and local residents looking at the water. they have left and gone home once the rain packed up. we heeded them to do that as well.

essentially, alex, the word resonating with everyone is isabel. that hurricane hit this area of 2003. people don't think of washington, d.c. or virginia as a hurricane area, but there is experience here. isabel caused a billion dollars of worth of damage. the mayor said when isabel came here it was dreadful, they had $2 million worth of damage in this area alone and muayed the water up to three blocks in the city. he said it wouldn't be impossible for that to happen today. the concern here in our area is power, flood and trees, specifically the flood we expect between 6 to 12 inches of rain here specifically in the d.c. met row area. there's a lot of trees and homes built around the trees not only in downtown areas of washington but in the suburbs. it's expected that if you live in this area, there's a good chance you will lose power, alex. >> there's mandatory evacuations for 11 loc 1 locality had virgi?

>> the parts hit hard are the eastern shore of virginia and norfolk, those areas. right here there's no mandatory evacuation yet. however, governor mcdonald from virginia did give the option to have a mandatory evacuation up to the localities, mean if the mayor of alex andrea doesn't have to ask permission from the governor, they would evacuate. so far folks are in a jovial mood. there's a bar in front of me, and they're having a hurricane watch party saying i survived hurricane irene 2011. people here are a little confident early on, alex. >> and, luke, with regard to when it's exactly going to make landfall, latest prediction i read was not until 2:00 in the morning. that does not mean that all the preceding winds won't be buffeting that entire area for a number of hours before that.

>> absolutely. the nexus of that storm will hit around the early morning hour, but it's interested by late afternoon probably around 4:00 or 5:00, we'll see a real intensity of the winds and rising the water. that is the real concern. if folks are sleeping, if there is a continuous mass of water coming into the streets and in low-lying areas of washington, d.c., that could pose a real serious problem. while winds aren't the biggest issue in washington, neck affect trees and power lines. folks won't be blown away like mike was in north carolina. the water is the entire game, and that's what we have to keep our eye on here. there is a good preparation in place. there's sandbags in downtown al alex andrea, virginia right now. so far folks are fairly confident. we'll see how confident they are at 2:00 a.m. when the bars let out here, alex. it's interesting to see if there's revellers at that hour. >> a bunch of spirited folks

there. >> they're confident. take care. >> let's hope their confident for good reason. let's hope so. thank you very much for that. let's go to jeff frenery to give us a look at those folks in virginia. they're playing it low-key right now, but they have something coming five, six hours from now. >> maybe ten hours out, but nonetheless it's making its quick advance here up the atlantic seaboard. the pictures have been amazing, alex, as we've watched all morning long, mike seidel and mark potter. also something of note, you can see that red box up there. that is a tornado watch bock in effect through the early afternoon. we had one report of a tornado touchdown, two homes destroyed just outside nags head, north carolina in columbia. the tornado threat is with us. we've already seen tornado reports, so there's no doubt that we also could see more of that. let's look at some of the most powerful winds where this storm

is really nailing the coastline. cape hatteras has calmed down slightly. we use that word loosely here. look at this. newburn has a wind gust at 74 miles per hour. we've seen them once again at 110 miles per hour at the cedar ferry terminal in north carolina. that's one of our top gusts so the storm has moved ashore. that's a technical thing because this storm is so large and widespread in its overall motion. we take a look. winds at 84 miles per hour. look at that central pressure, 952 millibars. it hasn't wavered a bit in that central pressure, and that's why the storm is so strong with the hurricane winds. here we go. hurricane warnings up the coastline. of course, we have more on the track a little later on. full update at 11:00 a.m. >> we look forward to that and a lot more in between them. mark potter is in nags head, north carolina for us.

mark, last hour you had to hold onto that railing to keep from blowing away. how are things now? >> reporter: well, i'm staying away from that railing now, because i'm not sure if it's going to hold up. the problem is the center of the storm is hanging to our southwest and not moving very fast in a northward direction, so that means we have several hours of these very strong winds and driving rains, and we will likely have several hours of this. the surf has also been coming up fiercely for some time, but we're being assisted now by a falling tide. so that's keeping a lot of that water off the beaches. the water that was threatening some of the dunes that protect the populated areas from the ocean waters, so that's good news. there's also good news out there in terms of damage assessments preliminarily now. our crews are out looking around, and they're not seeing very much. they're seeing some shingles coming off roofs. they've seen some limbs down,

things blowing around in people's yards. in terms of the substantive stuff, the roads, homes themselves, they're not seeing very much damage at all. so that's very good news. emergency managers here say their biggest concern may be still to come. they're worried about the storm surge. we're getting the surge now on the eastern side of the island, and it has come up. again, here, we're not seeing it doing too much damage, but their primary concern is that after the eye passes us to the west, the west winds that will come off the back of that storm could push water from the sound behind us here, and push that onto the west shoreline, and that's the flooding that they're worried about most. that will come later today. this is all the reason that they are urging -- that they did urge people here to evacuate and that officials in the northeast are urging people there to evacuate.

these are dangerous winds. these are dangerous conditions. people should not be outside, should not be in these areas when this storm comes through. back to you, alex. >> absolutely. hey, mark, i know that our colleague mike seidel is on the beach at that location right where you are. his vantage point from the camera allows us to see shingles shorn off the roofs there right along the coast. in terms of the damage, how long has irene been giving you these tremendous winds, and how much longer do you think you're going to have to deal with these winds? >> reporter: we've had this for several hours now. i'm liking at mike right on the beach right now below us right there. there's another weatherman down there doing that thing where you kind of lay into the wind and the wind supports you. he's doing that for his camera. it looks kind of silly. the shingles he's talking about, i see them there. they are coming up. some of the siding is peeling. that's a serious problem. we're having a problem here in

the hotel where we stay, the east wind is going into the windows, and all the rooms are soaked. the roof tiles in the hotel are coming down because they're soaked. we have flooding in all the rooms. in terms of substantial damage, structural damage to homes, we're not able to see that. so that's considered good news. there is small level damage to the roofs. this is basically what you get in a category 1 storm. if there were a 2 or 3 or anything higher, it would be a much, much different circumstance. to answer your question about how many longer we're thinking we've got several hours of this to go. >> wow. that's going fto be a long several hours. mark, what about power outages? people can see in our lower screen, 200,000 throughout the state of north carolina without power. do you see any lights on in your line of vision, or is it all out where you are? >> it's hard to tell, we're in the daytime hours.

we have lights in the hotel, and i don't think they're on generator power. i think we still have normal power here. there are outages all around, and we're expecting if we don't get a power outage, we'll have one soon. we lost cable. i can tell you that. we were watching you. we can't see anymore. other than that, you know, i think the power is still on in this area, in the upper outer banks area. >> okay. well mark potter doing a hell of a job there. we'll check in with you again. we'll go to cape cod. cape cod is over 600 -- closer to 700 miles from nags head. the picture we were just showing tu there with mark potter, but what people are doing is exactly what they should be doing, because the cape is a very low-lying area. you see a lot of people there taking off. there are two bridges there that connect cape cod to the mainland of massachusetts. there's sagimore bridge and borne bridge.

both are being heavily traveled right now. despite vk people get off the cape, we have ron allen right there on the cape for us right there on the southern coast. it looks like it's getting a little worse. we saw you a couple of hours ago, and it didn't look so bad. it seems like irene is being felt where you are now. >> reporter: well, we've got a lot of fog, alex, and it's daunting watching mark and mike down in nags head. that will happen here in 24 hours. we're in a narrow beach facing south. the concern here is that the tides are high, astronomically high for in season. that will make the effect of the storm that much more serious here. in this direction you can see there's a beachfront hotel down there that they've been pulling the plastic chairs in just a little while ago, and you can see there's not a lot of protection. there's a dune there, there's a

sea wall there, and it's about 20 feet before the storm surge would push this water up into that hotel, and there's a harbor behind it. over here we'll ask the camera to pan around to your right. the island queen is a boat going out to martha's vineyard. turn the other way, if you could. there goes the island queen. it's a boat, and people are waving. it's heading to martha's vineyard, and it's empty. it's empty. it's usually crowded with tourists this time of year heading out to martha's vineyard. out in that direction six miles or so, you can't see the island because of so approximamuch fog. normally that boat is filled with people enjoying the holiday. as a matter of fact, i had a holiday planned for martha's vineyard today, but that ain't going to happen. we think it will start raining tonight, and by tomorrow late afternoon we'll be dealing with irene probably a tropical storm at that point. again, still a lot of winds, a

lot of rains. the governor of massachusetts thinks that this entire state is going to be affected because the path of the storm sort of dissects and goes through the middle of massachusetts. you'll have rain on one side and heavy winds on the other. we'll see what it leaves behind. >> at least you're in good company. the president had to cut his plans short and return home to the white house. i understand the fact that nobody is getting on that ferry from wood's hole heading to martha's vie i can't understane. i imagine many are kooming on the ferries to come back? haven't they increased the number of ferries to get off the island? >> reporter: they have been doing that for the last few days. it's quite a trick to get on and off the vineyard because there's so few ferries. yes, they've added extra boats. i think the plans is to try and stop the ferry entirely sometime

sunday into montaday. you can't get a reservation sunday, monday, through most of the tuesday. there are other boats out in the islands from lower down in rhode island. those stopped yesterday. the waters are going in that direction. everything here will come to a standstill in about 24 hours or so, and it's this gradual buildup. a lot of people are talking about 1991 when hurricane bob flue throu blew through. this is a harbor over there that is supposedly a quote-unquote protected harbor. hundreds of boats in there. they're not moving them out. they're going to take the chance and leave them there. we'll see how it goes. people up here in this part of the country are hearty souls, and they've been through this before. the people that are leaving are mostly vacationers, but so many residents here are staying, hunkering down and just gog ride it out. >> at least they have another 24 hours or so before things get

back there, and they may have occasion to change their mind. thank you very much. let's go to nbc meteorologist jeff frenery. as ron described, it's a hearty bunch a lot of guys say we'll ride this out. what do you think is heading their way? >> it looks exactly the same. i was looking up and down the coastline. this storm will pick up more forward motion by the time it gets to massachusetts and connecticut, it's still a long duration wind event here for most of the mid-atlantic states. now, as we look right now at the radar, what we're finding is the eye of the storm really hard to define and somewhere in this vicinity. we know a lot of other reporters right out here near nags head, all kill devil hills. they're going to be continuously lashed with outer bands throughout the next six hours or so with this event already continued to have these winds here across the carolina coastline in excess of 70 miles per hour for about the last five

hours. so it's a long duration and it's continual widespread effects here. >> it is, indeed. kill devil hills, and let's go to kristen dalgren standing by. it's just north of nags head, and clearly you're getting a lot of rain. we can hear that rain. >> reporter: yeah, alex, it is just pelting me right now. it feels like somebody is shooting needles at me between the rain coming down at this speed, and the sand being blown off the beach and things just getting worse and worse here as we go through the morning and expecting that to continue to deteriorate now. take a look behind me at the beach. not just the wind and rain with the hurricanes, but the surf and storm surge, all of that water pushed ahead of the storm. very dangerous, and it's just churning out there. the tide has gone out a little bit soshgs that good news that

this isn't hitting at high tide. as far as damage in this area, still just seeing minor damage. some screens ripped off screen porches here along the outer banks, a couple of shingles have gone, but really not too much damage that we're seeing in our immediate surrounding here. also, not seeing a whole lot of really big things flying through the air yet, although i watch the power lines really shaking out there. so far we still have power, but there's reports of hundreds of thousands of people now without power, and that number is expected to grow expotentially throughout the day, alex. >> apparently at least 200 have been aeffectsed without power there through the state of north carolina, kristin. talk about the topography where you are. it looks like there's a bit of a buffer zone. you have these dunes behind you. what's in front of you? >> reporter: in front of me are houses and hotels.

there's probably about 50 feet from the beach to where they start, and then a couple of blocks of homes here. so if the water were to come over these dunes, that would be bad news for all of those houses that are built up on stilts but still that surge and water could be a problem. then on the other side of this, alex, is the sound. so you have water that could come and wash over from both sides and then be pulled back out to sea. that's a concern that people are watching very closely as well. that's why the evacuation order here was one of the first that officials ordered. >> he yeah. i can about imagine. have you seen a lot of residents still, or is it pretty much a ghost area where you are? >> reporter: you know what? as far as what i'm seeing, it's really just media that's out here at this point. we get a lot of questions from people, why are you out there in it? the reason we're out here is so people can watch from the safety of their homes, and this gives

you a perspective of how bad it is without going out there yourself. we haven't seen a lot of people driving by or coming down to check out the beach at all. right now it's just the media out here. >> okay, well, that is definitely comforting to know because those look like pretty terrific conditions. thank you very much. we appreciate that. we go from kristen to talking about delaware, because the state police say all troopers are on stand-by awaiting irene rather. right now officers are helping with the mandatory evacuations, they're guarding all the property that's already been evacuated and i'm joining now thomas carper is live for us from wilmington. senator, good morning to you. >> good morning. how are you? >> i'm well. thank you. the question is how are you? how are things, for instance, as you remember coming into the studio there, what was the weather like? >> it was actually pretty good today. a lot of people out. went to the y this morning, and the place was jammed.

everybody was down at the riverfront last night. this morning i drove by and a lot of people from home depot are finding batteries and water and all. i think we're ready. we've had a couple of days to button down. for a lot of places where they get hurricanes routinely in the gulf and florida and the carolinas, hurricanes aren't a big deal. here they're a big deal. most people can't remember the last time we had one. our specialty is nor'easter. this is something new. we've been getting ready for this since thursday. we're ready to go. >> i'd love to know the specific preparations but we heard from governor jack march kelsaying the damage may be the worst in 50 years. you say you have other things you're used to. in terms of the preparations for a hurricane, what's yurn way? >> actually, the ppreparation fr the hurricane began years ago with the help of the army corps of engineers terrific dune system from the madeline line up

to lewis cape and that will help protect our coastal towns at the beach in places like that. the other thing that we've done is evacuated the -- the governor evacuated from lower lying coastal areas into three quarters of a mile. people are out of that part. most people complied readily. we checked in with deldot and they say there's nobody out on the highways. a lot of places with the hurricanes rather routinely. they're not sure they need to bail out and something someplace safer. here people take it seriously, and it's a good thing. >> in order to help people leaving their homes, don't you have shelters open in all three counties so far? >> we only have three counties. we have shelters in all of them. the most serious damage is in southern delaware where our beachers and farmland are. we have several shemters open there. we'll probably have more tonight. one of my favorite saying is

it's good to be lucky than smart. we hope we're smart, too. we're lucky because it looks like low tide is 2:00 a.m. sunday morning and it looks like the worst part of the eye of the storm is coming off at about 2:00 in the morning. low tide wilco inside with the arrival of the storm, which is great news. >> thank you for joining us and taking the time for us on msnbc. >> thanks for checking in. >> absolutely. thank you. we're keeping a close eye on a lot of things right now, but 12 minutes from now we expect an update from the national hurricane center on all of the latest details as to where irene is going, where it has been. look at that right now. that is our wonderful colleague from the weather channel mike seidel. he's going off camera right now. he needs a break. we'll take one right here on msnbc. we'll be right back. ♪ gone, gone away

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we're looking at asray park in a moment. in nine minutes we expect an all important update from the federal government. we have janet napolitano talking about the preparations on behalf of fema. we'll also have craig fugate, the director of fema joining her as well, the head of the american red cross. we'll have all the latest details. stay with us for that about eight minutes or so for now. michelle franzen has kept an eye on things there. what's it like now? >> reporter: yeah, we were receiving some of the first outer bands from hurricane irene, and just to give you a sense of how big that storm is, alex, we're supposed to not receive the the center of that storm and see that for the next 24 hours or so. so that's going to give us a lot of time. a little bit more time to prepare. the boardwalk here, you can see a lot of people coming out to

check out the situation. it's not exactly what people -- what governor christie wants people to do. he wants them to get away from the shore and a lot of businesses are closed here. take a walk over to me, you can see the waves churning up here about an hour ago we saw a couple of surfers try to take to the water. they have patrol teams out here. they did not make it in. further south they did. >> i'm sorry for the sbrurps. jeff has an update from the hurricane center. what's the latest, jeff? >> in terms of the wind speed, it's still 85 miles per hour at the current moment. the central pressure has also stayed the same at 952 millibars. it's moving a little bit quicker here, north-northeast at 15 miles per hour, but i really think the remarkable thing about this update is innot wavered in strength at all. we're talking about a hurricane

that is continually feeding off these warm atlantic waters. get this, alex. hurricane-force winds still extend 90 miles from the center of the storm, and tropical storm-force winds some 260 miles from the center. i don't think i've seen a category 1 storm hold up that well at landfall with hurricane-force winds reaching that far out. those winds right along the outer banks that you saw is still gusts to 75 miles per hour, and we're seeing those winds right now holding steady at 85 miles per hour. the current track, it really hasn't adjusted too much at this point. it slowed down maybe a little bit here. you can see by sunday at 8:00 a.m. it does put it right over maybe even just to the south of long island right near new york city. so maybe it's slowed down here by a couple of hours, but all in all winds are at category 1 strength up the coastline. we put this into motion with the

updates. sometimes you get issues, but not with this map. this area in red is the hurricane-force windfield. this is why we have all those evacuations. you can also see there in our video, atlantic beach. is that mark potter or kerry sanders right now? >> is that kerry right there? kerry, can you hear us? >> reporter: yeah, it's me. >> you're in atlantic beach. >> reporter: this is the back end of the hurricane coming through here. these are the hurricane-force winds. it's brutal. i got tell you the the sand -- i'm so fortunate just a little -- >> it was so quiet passing over. the tide has gone out, but you can see some of the damage up there. this is from that pounding surf. it took out the far end of the pier there.

let me get out of the wind. you can see mother nature's erosion here. i'm 5'5", and it's eating away at the beach here. so really powerful winds there. this is the back end of the storm. the really good news appears to be that irene -- local authorities say -- >> yeah. >> reporter: the lines and power poles are up, and there's only a little bit of damage. mostly street flooding. >> what we see right there at atlantic beach where kerry sanders is no doubt winds gusting in the 60-mile-per-hour range. what we're witnessing happening is this long duration wind event. we're talking about five to six hours of winds sustained in the 60-mile-per-hour range, constantly gusting into the 70s.

it compounds the impacts, and alex, i know, we've covered this stuff a lot. looking at that video, that looks like definitely a category 2, even though the winds in the center of the storm say category 1. >> i know. that's so deceiving about it. we hear about these little bursts of higher winds. our thanks to kerry sanders who tried to bring it to us. when you deal with a hurricane and the satellite signal, that happens. he had a clear sky overhead a short hour and a half ago. the backside of the eye hurricane winds is what he was most worried about. he has them there in atlantic beach. we will stay here with a lot more coverage of hurricane irene. we're watching it barrel up the eastern seaboard, so stay with us. we'll be right back. every time a local business opens its doors or creates another laptop bag

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