U.S. Power Squadrons renew cooperative charting program

January 18, 2013

 U.S. Power Squadron members and others report wrecks and other potential navigation dangers to NOAA, and cartographers update the nautical chart. These are realtime displays from a January 16 hydrographic survey, as NOAA Research Vessel Bay Hydro II confirmed the location of a reported wreck in the Chesapeake Bay.

Download here. (Credit: NOAA)

This week, NOAA and the U.S. Power Squadrons, a non-profit organization dedicated to safe boating, will renew a 50-year commitment to a cooperative charting program that helps to update the nation’s thousands of navigational charts.

Under the voluntary program, formalized by a Memorandum of Agreement, members of the U.S. Power Squadrons scan water and land areas, looking for changing conditions that may not be reflected on NOAA nautical charts. Power Squadrons members submit their reports online, and NOAA cartographers review and incorporate changes to their navigation products.

“The partnership between Coast Survey and the Power Squadrons is a long and successful one, speaking to our shared vision of safety on U.S. waters,” said Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director of NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey. “The cooperative charting program, originally formalized in 1963, continues an extremely cost-effective method for correcting chart errors that are the result of constantly changing coastlines and seafloors.”

Over the last ten years, Power Squadrons members have submitted more than 28,000 corrections to NOAA’s nautical charts and the United States Coast Pilot, a series of nautical books that cover a variety of information important to coastal and Great Lakes navigators. More than 4,000 members have submitted reports, adding their particular local knowledge to NOAA’s national effort to keep navigation materials accurate.

“I believe that our cooperative efforts with NOAA represent an ideal partnership between a volunteer organization and a federal agency,” says John Alter, chief commander of the U.S. Power Squadrons. “It gives our members a feeling of accomplishment and pride to see their contributions reflected in the latest nautical chart updates and provides a tangible benefit to being a United States Power Squadrons’ member.  This cooperative effort has stood the test of time, and we look forward to our continued commitment to this important civic service.”

Glang will attend the U.S. Power Squadrons’ annual meeting on Saturday. He and John Alter, chief commander of the U.S. Power Squadrons, will sign a new Memorandum of Agreement that updates and improves the cooperative charting program.

In 1963, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, one of NOAA's predecessor agencies, recognized the challenge of maintaining one thousand U.S. nautical charts ? covering 95,000 miles of coastline ? with the sparse resources at hand. Many charts would go uninspected by Coast Survey surveyors for decades, agency leaders acknowledged. To help remedy the situation, Coast Survey established the cooperative charting program so local Power Squadron members could check their local charts for accuracy and report discrepancies.

The U.S. Power Squadrons is a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to making boating safer and more enjoyable by teaching classes in seamanship, navigation and related subjects. The organization has nearly 40,000 members, in more than 400 squadrons across the country and in U.S. territories.

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey, originally formed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807, updates the nation’s nautical charts, surveys the coastal seafloor, responds to maritime emergencies and searches for underwater obstructions and wreckage that pose a danger to navigation. Join Coast Survey on Twitter @nauticalcharts, and check out the NOAA Coast Survey Blog at http://noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com for more in-depth coverage of surveying and charting.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Visit us at www.noaa.gov and join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

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For those without power, patience wears thin, tempers flare

Across the Midwest and up and down the East Coast, millions of people are living without power.

By Cliff Owen, AP

Linemen from Gulf Power of Pensacola, Fla., work to replace downed power lines in Middleburg, Va., July 3.

By Cliff Owen, AP

Linemen from Gulf Power of Pensacola, Fla., work to replace downed power lines in Middleburg, Va., July 3.

And they are not happy about it.

More than 900,000 households remain without power early Wednesday in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio, the states hardest hit by the storm Friday night that packed 80-mph winds.

Residents are waiting for power in homes where the heat has risen to 90 degrees. Many have tossed away hundreds of dollars worth of food and sought shelter in hotels.

All the while, they seethe toward electric utility companies they say are taking way too long to make repairs and have not been responsive to their concerns. In Washington, D.C., there are calls to investigate how the local public utility responded to the emergency.

"All the people in my neighborhood are extremely frustrated," says David Scholl, a Bethesda, Md., lawyer who has been without power since Friday. He says Pepco, the electric company that provides service to his D.C. suburb, has been unresponsive.

He says the company provides conflicting information on its website and through its hotline. Over the course of five hours on Tuesday, he says the company went from reporting no outages in his neighborhood to two customers affected to 602 customers affected.

He says at least once a year he loses electricity for several days because of some weather event. And he doesn't understand why.

"Nobody holds Pepco accountable," he says. "This is business as usual."

Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson says no one expected the storm's severity. The majority of Washington, D.C.-area customers are expected to have power by 11 p.m. Friday.

"This was not a storm where tree limbs just fell on our wires," Anderson says. "This was a storm where large mature trees were uprooted and lifted and just thrown into our poles — snapping our poles in half and wrapping our high-voltage wires around homes, businesses and cars."

Power companies that serve the Midwest and East Coast say they are working as quickly as possible, but repairing power lines and transmission stations takes time.

"When trees take down wires and poles come down, we have to physically replace the poles and put those wires back on those poles," Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for FirstEnergy, which serves Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.

He says as many as five times the normal amount of the company's regular workers were out working on the restoration efforts.

American Electric Power, which provides service for Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky, said 667,000 customers remained without power on Tuesday. That's down from 1.4 million after the storm, says spokeswoman Terri Flora.

She says most customers can expect to have their power back by this weekend. She says 306 transmission stations, which are mostly in fields or mountains and carry up to 785,000 volts of electricity to smaller stations that distribute electricity to communities, went down during the storm.

She counseled patience.

But customers say they are running out of it.

Jenna Hatfield, 31, of Cambridge, Ohio, has been without power since Friday. She, her husband, Josh, and their children, Nicholas, 6, and Parker, 4, were vacationing in North Carolina when the storms hit and drove home through a very dark West Virginia, she said.

Five days later, all the food in the refrigerator and freezer spoiled. She's heard she won't get power back until July 8.

"I'm very frustrated at this point," she says. "Nobody seems to think that we are a priority. I really don't think it should take over a week to restore power. Two to three days is an inconvenience. Over a week, you're messing with my livelihood."

Hatfield, editor for BlogHer.com, says she's had to take her children to work with her at a friend's house to get some air conditioning and do her job.

The family has a generator, which they use to plug in two fans, the refrigerator and a light at night.

She says American Electric Power needs to find another way to release information, other than online, because most affected people do not have access to the Internet.

Serena Golden, 25, of Washington, D.C., had power throughout the storm, but lost it Sunday night. She doesn't know why or when it will come back.

"I have so little information," says Golden, an associate editor at Inside Higher Ed. "It does make me mad because I feel like there's nothing I can do."

The Fourth of July holiday and the heat wave — when temperatures are expected to reach 99 degrees on Thursday — are making things worse, she says. There's also a looming rate increase from Pepco.

"It seems like if you want to charge even more money then you should provide even better service," she says.

While they wait, Golden and her three housemates avoid the upstairs rooms.

"None of us has been able to sleep because it's so hot," Golden said. "My housemates are really upset and angry — we're all pretty unhappy."

In D.C., Councilwoman Mary Cheh says she plans to ask the council's public services and consumer affairs committee as well as the district's public service commission, which oversees Pepco, to launch an investigation into how Pepco handled the storm-recovery efforts.

Cheh, who was without power for days after the storm, said she's received e-mails from frustrated residents. She said she wants to look into the company's response time during power outages, whether Pepco has enough staff and how it handles communications during emergencies.

"All we have is Pepco's generalities about the kind of job they did," says Cheh, who along with other council members met with Pepco on Tuesday. "I want something more in depth and reliable."

Relatives of seniors Jean and Ray Fitzgerald are boiling over Pepco's response. Anita Henck, of Los Angeles, and her son, Andrew, have scoured information online and called the utility's phone line every day to find out when her parents, who live in Bethesda, Md., will have their power restored.

It took the company three days to even post that a power outage occurred in Fitzgerald's neighborhood.

"Pepco's record of poor service is legendary," Anita Henck says. "But their lack of service for the elderly is disheartening."

Jean Fitzgerald is 79 and has breast cancer. She just started radiation therapy. Ray is 81. The temperature in their home reached 86 degrees in recent days. If it gets hotter, the couple will find a hotel, says Jean Fitzgerald.

A Depression-era baby born in the South and raised on a farm, Jean Fitzgerald says they are managing — for now.

"I don't want to live like this for many months," she says. "We have to be patient in this kind of thing and I know that, but sometimes patience wears thin."

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Millions find ways to cope without power after storms

PURCELLVILLE, Va. – With no power at his home, Morgan Smith has been sleeping on the floor where he works at Market Street Coffee. On Monday morning, the barista was joined by people who crowded into the café— one of the few places in this rural corner of Loudoun County with power and free, working Wi-Fi — to charge cellphones and work on their laptops.

By Jeanna Duerscherl, AP

David Robertson and Steve Jones fill their shopping cart with juice at the Mick-or-Mack IGA grocery store on July 2 in New Castle, Va.

By Jeanna Duerscherl, AP

David Robertson and Steve Jones fill their shopping cart with juice at the Mick-or-Mack IGA grocery store on July 2 in New Castle, Va.

Among them was Anna Novaes of nearby Lovettsville, who had spent the night in her basement and showered at a gym. "We've had to be creative," she said.

As record heat cooked states from Indiana to Maryland and more than 2 million people were still without power after weekend storms, the tired, the sleepless and the sweaty yearning for some cool found refuge in odd spots.

Nearly 2.7 million people in 11 states still lack power after a ferocious fast-moving storm, called a "derecho" for its straight-line winds, struck Friday. Authorities say 17 people died, many because of falling trees, as the storms traveled west to east. Power companies say full restoration will take until the end of the week.

The power failures complicated the Monday morning commute as drivers navigated around downed trees and did the four-way stop dance at knocked-out traffic lights. Adding to the aggravation, temperatures topped 100 in the South and hovered in the upper 90s elsewhere.

At The Vine Church in Dunn Loring, Va., air conditioning was a sure-fire inducement for expanding the flock. A hand-painted 3-foot-by-6-foot sign on its lawn beckoned: "We have A/C. Join us."

Power had roared back at the United Methodist church around midday Saturday, pastor Todd Schlechty said. He and his family had taken refuge there after enduring the heat at their powerless house. "If we don't have power, I figured a lot of other people didn't have power," he said.

So with assistance from his son, 8, and daughter, 12, Schlechty painted the sign and invited the community to partake of the cool air. And as things go in a modern-day ministry, Schlechty rigged extension cords and power strips in the sanctuary so people could recharge their electronics along with their spirits. "We had a lot of people come in with cellphones and tablets and laptops," he said.

Yesterday, in addition to worship services, the church organized a cookout and a kickball game. Families stayed until late in the evening, Schlechty said.

"The church is interested in being a help in the time of need," he said.

In the Washington metro area, the now powerless found themselves at loose ends as their BlackBerrys lost juice and their iPad batteries withered.

Simone Rathle of SimoneInk, the Bayou Bakery's public relations firm said that the snaking line of people who descended on the Arlington, Va., site, seconds after the doors opened wanted to know one thing — is the Wi-Fi working?

Bayou Bakery's chef David Guas on Monday offered two drinks designed to beat the heat, cold hibiscus ginger tea and Thai basil mint latté, at half-price along with the free Internet.

"They were slammed for hours," Rathle said.

Other restaurants in the area let customers know their power status on Twitter using the hashtag #WhatsOpen, Rathle said.

In Ohio, entire towns blacked out, but for a handful of emergency generators.

The hospital in Newark, a city of 40,000, got power Monday, but little else did. In nearby Granville, Denison University closed and sent students home. Still, the village's four-day July Fourth fair will go on as planned Wednesday, organizers said, powered by generators supplied by the amusement ride company.

The lack of air conditioning sent Terry Ann Grove, 71, on a trip down memory lane, but only for a moment.

"It makes me remember what life was like when I was a kid," Grove said as she bought ice, bread and peanut butter at one of a handful of open stores in Newark. "It's worse now because we're used to air-conditioning and McDonald's any time you want it."

Grove spent a day with a daughter who had power in Columbus, 45 minutes away, but she returned to be home even though power wasn't expected until this weekend. "That's what porches are for, I guess," she said.

Lines for gasoline, which lasted as long as an hour on the weekend, were gone by Monday. A custom of treating broken traffic lights as a four-way stop sign had taken over. And while most businesses and nearly all homes were without power, pockets of all services could be found within a 5- or 10-mile drive.

"It's hard on the wallet," said Becky Latham, a fast-food worker who will lose several days' pay because her restaurant is closed. "Less money earned and more money spent. That's what the storm brought me."

Others say they feel trapped by the heat and lack of power.

Emma Patrick, 91, said she feels like she's living inside a giant booby trap. When the storm tore through her town of Beckley, W.Va., on Friday, it toppled a tree onto her roof, bringing with it a tangle of electrical wires.

"These electrical wires are all in my house, all in my roof, all over the doors," Patrick said. "I just don't know what to do. I am terrified to move around because the tree is through the roof and the wires are connected to it."

The power is out, but she doesn't know whether the wires dangling from the rafters are live. Meanwhile, her food is rotting and she says she hasn't eaten in two days.

"What do you do? I am a nervous wreck. I am terrified. What if I die here?" Patrick said.

To the power company, Patrick is one of thousands in precarious, powerless situations. Nearly 60% of Appalachian Power's customers are without electric service as a result of Friday night's storm.

"The electric company is saying, 'You just have to wait,' " she said.

To pass the time, Patrick, who has cancer, says she prays.

"I don't have anywhere to go. I can't see the news. I can only pray to God," she said. "I am praying and asking God, 'Please Lord, don't let this house burn up.' "

Contributing: Dennis Cauchon in Granville, Ohio, and Natalie DiBlasio in McLean, Va.

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Heat, power outages continue assault on East, Midwest

An unrelenting wave of stifling heat continued to blanket the East and Midwest on Monday as millions of people struggled without power for a third straight day.

By Parker Michels-Boyce, AP

A car crushed by a fallen tree on Carrington Road in Lynchburg, Va., on Sunday.

By Parker Michels-Boyce, AP

A car crushed by a fallen tree on Carrington Road in Lynchburg, Va., on Sunday.

About 2 million customers from North Carolina to New Jersey and as far west as Illinois were without power Monday morning. And utility officials said that for many the power would likely be out for several more days.

Since Friday, severe weather has been blamed for at least 22 deaths, most from trees falling on homes and cars. The culprit was a ferocious summer storm that cut a swath of destruction Friday night across 11 states, toppling trees, knocking out traffic lights, and sending thousands of people to shelters and into community pools to escape the heat.

The heat wave that began last week was expected to drive temperatures into the 100s from Indianapolis to Atlanta through the Fourth of July holiday.

The worst of the outages remained in the areas around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. To alleviate commuter congestion Monday, federal and state officials gave many workers the option of staying home. Federal agencies opened in Washington, but non-emergency employees had the option of taking leave or working from home. Maryland's governor also gave state workers wide leeway for staying out of the office.

Heat warnings have been issued for parts of Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio. In St. Louis, the National Weather Service warned of "dangerous heat" as temperatures climb to 106 degrees on Monday.

State public health officials have issued a boil-water advisory for all of West Virginia, where Environmental Health Services Director Barbara Taylor said statewide power outages related to the Friday night storm have put many water supplies at risk, and the advisory will remain in effect until further notice.

Since a storm pushed a tree through the roof of her Beckley, W.Va., home, Emma Patrick, says she's been living with a tangle of electrical wires. "These electrical wires are all in my house, all in my roof, all over the doors," Patrick says. "I am 91 years old with cancer. I am terrified to move around. I don't know if these wires are live or dead."

"The electric company is saying; 'You just have to wait.' I have been calling and calling and calling and these people act like they just do not care."

In Ohio, about 445,000 residents and businesses were without power in the aftermath of the state's worst storm since 2008, when it was battered by the remnants of Hurricane Ike. About 200 National Guard members were going door-to-door in the Columbus and Dayton areas Monday to check on residents who might need help. Columbus planned to open fire hydrants to help residents cool off.

"It makes me remember what life was like when I was a kid," said Terry Ann Grove, 71 , buying ice, bread and peanut butter at one of a handful of open stores in Newark, Ohio. "It's worse now because we're used to air-conditioning and McDonald's any time you want it."

Grove spent a day with a daughter who had power in Columbus, 45 minutes away, but returned to be home even though power wasn't expected until this weekend. "That's what porches are for, I guess," she said.

In nearby Granville, nobody had electricity, except for a few emergency generators. Denison University closed and sent students home. However, the village's four-day July Fourth fair was scheduled to start Wednesday -- with or without power -- powered by generators supplied by the amusement ride company.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency, saying the storms caused the most widespread, non-hurricane-related power outage in that state's history. A wastewater treatment plant in Lynchburg lost power and discharged at least 250,000 gallons of water into the James River.

"This is not a one-day situation," McDonnell said. "It is a multiday challenge."

With no power at his home, barista Morgan Smith has been sleeping on the floor of Market Street Coffee in rural Purcellville, Va., for the last two nights. The store - which never lost power - is one of the few places in the western Loudoun County town with free wifi, and Monday morning, was busy with people charging cell phones and typing on laptops.

"People have been very flustered," Smith said. "Exhausted."

In the shop, Anna Novaes of nearby Lovettsville caught up on work while her daughter, Anna Luiza Mendonca, used her own laptop to take an online English class. The family lost power Friday night, and utility NOVEC forecast the outage would last until Tuesday afternoon.

"We've had to be creative," Novaes said. "We've been sleeping in the basement because it's fresher and cooler down there. And we've been going to the gym to take showers."

John Swift who lost power at his home in a suburb of Richmond, Va., toughed out the power outage without complaint. The heat, he said, was the "biggest nuisance."

"I've got a camp stove. I've got cold showers. I don't watch TV. It's not a big deal," said Swift, 60.

Already, the heat wave has "broken hundreds of daily records and quite a few all-time records," said Weather Service meteorologist Katie LaBelle. "The heat is actually a very significant threat, especially with all the power outages. Coming behind that storm, with all the damage it caused, reacting to the heat is a high priority, making sure people can find cool places while they wait for the power to come back on."

Weekend temperatures topped 109 in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Meteorologists in Jacksonville said the combination of 100-degree temperatures and high humidity there made it feel like 118.

Some states declared emergencies and activated disaster-response agencies. Governors in New Jersey and Ohio called out the National Guard.

Officials focused on the most vulnerable residents: children, the sick and the elderly.

In Washington, D.C., officials canceled summer school for Monday as they continued to assess storm damage. The city opened libraries and recreation centers and extended the hours at community pools to give residents without power respite from the heat. The city dispatched National Guard troops to powerless intersections to direct traffic and keep people away from debris and downed power lines.

Maryland opened 74 cooling stations to help residents cope with the heat and was canvassing hospitals and nursing homes to ensure they have enough power to keep elderly and sick residents cool, Maryland Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ed McDonough said. The number of people without power is similar to power outages following hurricanes, he said.

"That's still an awful lot of people without power in the extreme heat we're having now," McDonough said. "It's still an event that's going to take days instead of hours. We didn't have the kind of warning you have with hurricane so they couldn't stage repair crews ahead of time."

In western Pennsylvania, power had been restored to 95% of the 63,000 customers who suffered outages during the storm. The rest were expected to have electricity back late Monday.

Contributing: Gary Strauss, Anthony DeBarros and Natalie DiBlasio in McLean, Va., Dennis Cauchon in Ohio and the Associated Press

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NW storm cuts power, thousands try to stay warm (AP)

By MANUEL VALDES and JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press Manuel Valdes And Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press – Sat Jan 21, 7:22 am ET

SEATTLE – Tens of thousands of Pacific Northwest residents faced the prospect of a chilly weekend after a powerful storm brought snow and ice and left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines. Several Oregon counties saw their worst flooding in more than a decade.

The National Weather Service forecast more rain and winds gusting as high as 40 mph Saturday in Western Washington, a combination that could bring down even more snow-laden and ice-damaged trees.

Nearly 230,000 customers were without power late Friday night in Western Washington, about 220,000 of them Puget Sound Energy customers.

The utility has brought in repair crews from across the West and planned to field more than 800 linemen on Saturday, in addition to tree-trimming crews, spokesman Roger Thompson said.

"The wind is a wild card that could set us back," he said, adding PSE hoped to have the majority of the outages restored by Sunday, although some customers will probably be without power into early next week.

The Weather Service predicted weekend lows in the mid-30s.

Several warming shelters have been opened in the area to aid people whose homes are without heat.

Despite warnings from emergency officials, the first cases of possible carbon monoxide poisoning surfaced Friday night. Two families in the Seattle suburb of Kent were taken to hospitals after suffering separate cases of possible poisoning. Both had been using charcoal barbecues indoors for heat.

The storm was already blamed for three deaths. A mother and her 1-year-old son died after torrential rain on Wednesday swept away a car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot. An elderly man was fatally injured Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed near Seattle.

On Washington's Mount Rainier, a blizzard kept rescuers from searching Friday for two campers and two climbers missing since early this week. Just east of that region, about 200 skiers and workers were able to leave the Crystal Mountain ski resort after transportation officials reopened the area's main highway, closed two days earlier by fallen trees.

Near Tacoma, three people escaped unharmed Friday when a heavy snow and ice load on the roof of an Allied Ice plant caused the building to collapse. West Pierce Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hallie McCurdy said they heard loud noises and got out just in time.

As floodwaters receded, residents of Oregon's Willamette Valley began taking stock of damage in soaked cities.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber paid a visit Friday to the hard-hit town of Turner, where 100 homes were damaged or still underwater.

Friday's mainly dry streets belied a morning of terror barely 24 hours earlier, when emergency crews conducted 55 boat rescues as water filled streets, homes and businesses.

"You just watch the water rise hour by hour, and there's nothing you can do about it," Mayor Paul Thomas said. "It's a long, slower sort of torture."

Kitzhaber said the state would work with local and federal officials to try and get disaster funding to Turner and other communities hard-hit by flooding.

The governor praised residents' strong sense of community as neighbors helped each other.

Nancy Ko saw that spirit first-hand. From the safety of higher ground, she watched a live feed from a security camera as water rose over the curb and lapped against the front door of the convenience store and cafe she owns just feet from Mill Creek.

Out of the blue, five strangers showed up and plopped sandbags in front of the door, preventing damage that she believes would have otherwise been far more severe.

"Just a godsend," said Ko, a Korean immigrant who has owned the store for six years. "Good person, amazing persons."

Elsewhere in the Willamette Valley, a 35-year-old woman who drove a Ford Mustang into 4 feet of floodwater was plucked from the roof Friday by deputies who arrived by boat to save her. It was one of a number of dramatic rescues in western Oregon, left sodden by as much as 10 inches of rain in a day and a half that has brought region's worst flooding in 15 years.

Interstate 5, the main road connecting Seattle and Portland, was briefly closed near Centralia so crews could remove fallen power lines.

Much of Washington's capital, Olympia, was without power.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's office, legislative buildings and other state agencies in Olympia lost electricity for several hours before power was restored. The governor thanked repair crews late Friday by hand-delivering peanut butter cookies.

The storm was "a constant reminder of who's in charge. Mother Nature is in charge, she gives us a wake-up call every once in a while, this is one of those," Gregoire said.

It was still snowing in the Cascades, with up to 2 feet possible in the mountains over the weekend.

At Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, airlines were trying to accommodate passengers whose flights were canceled Thursday. The airport's largest carrier, Alaska Airlines, canceled 50 of its 120 daily departures Friday. On Thursday, Alaska and sister airline Horizon canceled 310 flights to and from Seattle, affecting 29,000 passengers.

In Seattle, Carly Nelson was negotiating an icy sidewalk on her way to Starbucks. Nelson has been frequenting her neighborhood coffee shop to avoid cabin fever.

"I'm pretty tired of it. It gets old pretty fast. All my friends are stranded in little pockets and you can't get together to go to yoga," she said. "I'm just looking forward to being able to go wherever I want to go."

___

Cooper reported from Oregon. Associated Press writers Doug Esser, Ted Warren, Rachel La Corte, Nigel Duara and Nicholas K. Geranios contributed to this report.

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Japan says stricken nuclear power plant in cold shutdown (Reuters)

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Shinichi Saoshiro Kiyoshi Takenaka And Shinichi Saoshiro – Fri Dec 16, 7:59 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan declared its tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant to be in cold shutdown on Friday, taking a major step to resolving the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years but some critics questioned whether the plant was really under control.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked on March 11 by a huge earthquake and a towering tsunami which knocked out its cooling systems, triggering meltdowns, radiation leaks and mass evacuations.

In making the much-anticipated announcement, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda tried to draw a line under the most acute phase of the crisis and highlighted the next challenges: the clean-up and the safe dismantling of the plant, something the government says may take more than 30 years.

"The reactors have reached a state of cold shutdown," Noda told a government nuclear emergency response meeting.

"A stable condition has been achieved," he added, noting radiation levels at the boundary of the plant could now be kept at low levels, even in the event of "unforeseeable incidents."

A cold shutdown is when water used to cool nuclear fuel rods remains below boiling point, preventing the fuel from reheating. One of the chief aims of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), had been to bring the reactors to that state by the year-end.

The declaration of a cold shutdown could have repercussions well beyond the plant. It is a government pre-condition for allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant to go home.

Both Noda and his environment and nuclear crisis minister Goshi Hosono said that while the government still faced huge challenges, the situation at the plant was under control.

That provoked an angry response from senior local officials, Greenpeace and some reporters even as the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear agency welcomed "significant progress" at the plant.

"We hope that this will be a fresh step towards going back home but it does not change the fact that the path to bringing the crisis under control is long and tough," Fukushima governor Yuhei Sato said, according to the Asahi newspaper website.

Greenpeace dismissed the announcement as a publicity stunt.

"By triumphantly declaring a cold shutdown, the Japanese authorities are clearly anxious to give the impression that the crisis has come to an end, which is clearly not the case," Greenpeace Japan said in a statement.

Hosono acknowledged that there were some areas where it would be difficult to bring people back and said there could be small difficulties here and there, but he told a briefing: "I believe there will be absolutely no situation in which problems escalate and nearby residents are forced to evacuate."

The water temperature in all three of the affected reactors fell below boiling point by September, but Tepco had said it would declare a state of cold shutdown only once it was satisfied that the temperatures and the amount of radiation emitted from the plant remained stable.

Jonathan Cobb, an expert at the British-based World Nuclear Association, said the authorities had been conservative in choosing the timing of the announcement.

"The government has delayed declaration of cold shutdown conditions, one reason being to ensure that the situation at the plant was stable," Cobb said, adding that the evacuation zone should get progressively smaller as more of it was decontaminated.

Kazuhiko Kudo, professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University, said authorities needed to determine exactly the status of melted fuel inside the reactors and stabilize a makeshift cooling system, which handles the tens of thousands of tons of contaminated water accumulated on-site.

HUGE COSTS, ANXIETY

The government and Tepco will aim to begin removing the undamaged nuclear rods from the plant's spent fuel pools next year. However, retrieval of fuel that melted down in their reactors may not begin for another decade.

The enormous cost of the cleanup and compensating the victims has drained Tepco financially. The government may inject about $13 billion into the company as early as next summer in a de facto nationalization, sources told Reuters last week.

An official advisory panel estimates Tepco may have to pay about 4.5 trillion yen ($57 billion) in compensation in the first two years after the nuclear crisis, and that it will cost 1.15 trillion yen to decommission the plant, though some experts put it at 4 trillion yen ($51 billion) or even more.

Japan also faces a massive cleanup task outside the east coast plant if residents are to be allowed to go home. The Environment Ministry says about 2,400 square km (930 square miles) of land around the plant may need to be decontaminated, an area roughly the size of Luxembourg.

The crisis shook the public's faith in nuclear energy and Japan is now reviewing an earlier plan to raise the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear power to 50 percent by 2030 from 30 percent in 2010.

Japan may not immediately walk away from nuclear power, but few doubt that nuclear power will play a lesser role in future.

Living in fear of radiation is part of life for residents both near and far from the plant. Cases of excessive radiation in vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water have stoked anxiety despite assurances from public officials that the levels detected are not dangerous.

Chernobyl's experience shows that anxiety is likely to persist for years, with residents living near the former Soviet plant still regularly checking produce for radiation before consuming it 25 years after the disaster.

(Additional reporting by Yoko Kubota, Fredrik Dahl in VIENNA and Nina Chestney in LONDON; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Robert Birsel)

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Thousands remain without power week after October snowstorm (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of homes remained in the dark on Sunday a week after a historic snowstorm paralyzed the Northeast and cut power to more than three million customers.

In Connecticut, more than 112,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers were still in the dark.

Governor Dannel Malloy said the power company was not going to meet its goal of 99 percent restoration in each city and town by midnight on Sunday.

Malloy has called for an investigation into the massive and lengthy power outages that peaked at more than 830,000 customers statewide without heat and electricity during the monster October snowstorm.

"As soon as everyone's lights are back on, we need to have a very timely, thorough review of the power companies' performances, to identify what went wrong, why it went wrong, and most importantly identify solutions for the short-term before the next winter storm impacts Connecticut," said Malloy in a statement.

The deadly snowstorm that barreled through the Northeast last weekend and dumped more than two feet of snow in parts of the region has been blamed for well over a dozen deaths.

In Masssachusetts, where about 11,000 customers remained in the dark, Attorney General Martha Coakley has also called for a formal investigation of the power companies' restoration efforts.

A couple thousand customers were still without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Power restoration crews were aided by dry and sunny weather over the weekend expected to continue into the upcoming week.

Temperatures across the Northeast were forecast to climb into the 60s by Tuesday, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Tom Kines.

Some areas may reach 70 degrees on Tuesday or Wednesday, possibly challenging record highs, he said.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Power slowly restored following snowstorm (AP)

DENVER – About 9,000 homes and businesses along Colorado's Front Range are still without power after a fall snowstorm that downed trees and power lines.

The outages are in metro Denver and Boulder and in Greeley, Fort Collins and Loveland to the north.

Most of the outages are in areas covered by Xcel Energy, the state's largest utility. Xcel says it hopes to cut the outages to about 1,500 by Saturday.

In Loveland, the municipally owned utility said service had been restored to all but two dozen customers Friday afternoon. Longmont had about 150 customers without power.

The storm that began Tuesday and continued Wednesday brought about 6 inches of snow to Denver and about a foot to Greeley. The snow initially knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses.

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Tempers flare over 6 days of Conn. power outages (AP)

HARTFORD, Conn. – Tempers are snapping as fast as the snow-laden branches that brought down power wires across the Northeast last weekend, with close to 300,000 Connecticut customers still in the dark and the state's biggest utility warning them not to threaten or harass repair crews.

Angry residents left without heat as temperatures drop to near freezing overnight have been lashing out at Connecticut Light & Power: accosting repair crews, making profane criticisms online and suing. In Simsbury, a hard-hit suburban town of about 25,000 residents, National Guard troops deployed to clear debris have been providing security outside a utility office building.

At a shelter at Simsbury High School, resident Stacy Niezabitowski, 53, said Friday she would love to yell at someone from Connecticut Light & Power but hadn't seen any of its workers.

"Everybody is looking for someplace to vent — not a scapegoat, just someplace to vent your anger so somebody will listen and do something," said Niezabitowski, who was having lunch at the shelter with her 21-year-old daughter. "Nobody is doing anything."

The October nor'easter knocked out power to more than 3 million homes and business across the Northeast, including 830,000 in Connecticut, where outages now exceed those of all other states combined. Connecticut Light & Power has blamed the extent of the devastation partly on overgrown trees in the state, where it says some homeowners and municipalities have resisted the pruning of limbs for reasons including aesthetics.

The company called the snowstorm and resulting power outages "an historic event" and said it was focused on getting almost all power back on by Sunday night.

For some residents still dealing with outages, no excuse is acceptable.

In Avon, a Farmington Valley town where 85 percent of customers were still without power on Friday, town manager Brandon Robertson said he faulted CL&P for an "absolutely unacceptable and completely avoidable" situation. He said the high school that is being used as an emergency shelter was still running on a generator. Although public works crews had cleared most of the town roads, he said, more than 25 still were blocked as they waited for CL&P crews to clear power lines.

"Our residents are angry. We're angry," he said. "It's just really shocking."

The person who has taken the brunt of the public scorn is CL&P's president and chief operating officer, Jeffrey D. Butler. He has been appearing with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy at daily news briefings, but he was left to face a grilling by the media on his own Thursday night when the governor left the room after criticizing the slow pace of power restoration.

Butler said he was sorry so many residents have been left without power for so long during the chilly nights. He said Friday that his own house in the Farmington Valley has been without power since a generator failed, and he urged customers to remember the extent of the damage.

"People need to keep in perspective the magnitude of damage," he said.

The outages have driven thousands of people into shelters in New England and have led to several deaths, including eight in Connecticut.

In North Brookfield, Mass., an 86-year-old woman was found dead Thursday in her unheated home, and her 59-year-old son was taken to a hospital with symptoms of hypothermia, subnormal body temperature. The local fire chief said it was unfortunate they had not reached out to authorities or neighbors for help.

In New Jersey, authorities said fumes from a gasoline-powered generator are believed to have caused the deaths of an elderly couple discovered hours before electricity was restored to their home in rural Milford, near Pennsylvania, on Thursday evening.

For many without power, the past week has been a blur of moving between friends' homes or hotel rooms with occasional visits to their own houses to feed pets and check, in vain, for electricity.

Glastonbury resident Alison Takahashi, 17, said she has bunked with friends and, for a few nights, with her parents in a hotel 45 minutes away, the only opening they could find after the storm. She said her brother, a high school freshman, also has moved like a nomad between friends' homes all week, heading to the next when he worried he'd started wearing out his welcome.

"The cellphones are our life lines right now," said Takahashi, a Glastonbury High School senior. "It's the only way to know where everybody is, and if you forget your charger and your phone is dead, you can't reach anybody."

Some Connecticut residents have vented their frustration through dark humor on the Internet, turning to social media websites to ridicule the utility — often with profanity. One person tweeted: "Really (pound)CL&P? A hamster on a wheel would be a better power source."

A few particularly irate power customers have taken their anger out on utility crews.

CL&P spokeswoman Janine Saunders said some hostile customers have approached the crews, but she declined to provide details. A police officer posted outside the utility's office building in Simsbury along with a National Guard soldier said line crews had been threatened and they wanted to make sure people could complain without letting things get out of hand.

The utility urged the public via Twitter not to harass or threaten the line workers.

Saunders said the utility understands what people are going through and has stressed to customer service employees that they need to be empathetic.

"If people want to vent, call us, see us on Facebook," she said. "We're doing our best to try to respond to people and answer questions in those medium. But let the folks out in the field do their job."

In Massachusetts, where tens of thousands of customers were still without power, the National Grid said in a statement that there have been "only a couple isolated incidents" and that most customers have been thanking crews for their work: "They are demonstrating their appreciation by bringing crews coffee and food."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asked state utility regulators on Friday to conduct a formal investigation into how the state's major power companies prepared for and responded to the outages.

In Connecticut, CL&P has promised to restore power to 99 percent of its 1.2 million customers by Sunday night. Butler, the president, said more than 1,740 crews were working and the utility was prioritizing schools and polling sites for elections on Tuesday.

Simsbury resident Chris Gauthier, 47, said he was frustrated the power lines weren't maintained better before the storm, but he said he was too busy to worry about who to blame. Every day, he wakes up before the rest of his family to start a fire in his den's fireplace. He and neighbors were clearing a dozen fallen trees around his house with hand saws Friday as National Guard troops removed debris from the street.

"I have better things to do than dwelling on who's to blame and stuff like that," he said. "There are trees to clear and these guys (his three children) to feed and keep warm."

First Selectman Mary Glassman, of Simsbury, said many homes are still not reachable by car because of downed trees and power cables, and officials are concerned for the residents' safety as people in cold houses resort to driving across power lines to seek shelter elsewhere.

"We're concerned people are getting to their wits' end," she said.

Some business owners already were planning to pursue compensation from CL&P for their losses.

In Canton, Asylum Hair Salon owner Scott Simmons filed a negligence lawsuit against the utility to make up for $1,000 in lost business from Saturday to Wednesday. He said other businesses owners who still don't have power are taking a much bigger hit.

"I just think it was completely mishandled," Simmons said of CL&P's response to the outages.

A CL&P spokeswoman declined to comment on Simmons' claims.

____

Associated Press writers Pat Eaton-Robb in Simsbury and Dave Collins and Stephanie Reitz in Hartford contributed to this report.

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New PM: Japan should aim to reduce nuclear power (AP)

TOKYO – Japan's new prime minister has promised to restart nuclear plants following safety checks ordered after the crisis at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda also said Tuesday in his first policy speech since taking office two weeks ago that the country should reduce its reliance on atomic energy over the long term, but offered no specifics.

More than 30 of Japan's 54 reactors have been idled, causing electricity shortages amid sweltering summer temperatures.

Noda also said he would press ahead with the recovery of the tsunami-battered northeastern region, calling on his fellow citizens not to forget "the spirit of dignity of all Japanese" in the face of disaster.

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Katia ramps up power, but seen missing East Coast (Reuters)

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Katia powered up to a major Category 4 storm on Monday, but was expected to veer away from the U.S. East Coast later this week, avoiding a direct hit on a seaboard already battered by Hurricane Irene.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned, however, that U.S. East Coast beaches should still watch out in the coming week for large swells generated by Katia that could cause life-threatening coastal surf and rip currents.

By late Monday evening, Katia's winds had strengthened to 135 miles per hour, making it a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale as it tracked northwestward on a path over the ocean between Bermuda and the Caribbean, the Miami-based center said.

The storm was moving toward the northwest at about 10 mph and the hurricane center said it was expected to continue in this general direction through Wednesday.

The center said some fluctuations in strength were possible during the next 24 hours, followed by a slow weakening.

NHC hurricane specialist Robbie Berg told Reuters the greatest threat from Katia for the U.S. eastern seaboard was likely to be the large swells and resulting dangerous coastal surf and currents the storm generated on its path.

"Even though these storms may stay offshore, they still can be a deadly threat, especially to people going to the beach," Berg said. "It may be a beautiful nice day out and you may just not know that there are rip currents there that can pull you out to sea," he added.

Forecasters and residents of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard have been keeping an anxious eye on Katia after Hurricane Irene raked up the East Coast from the Carolinas to Maine last weekend. It killed at least 40 people and caused extensive flooding, especially in New Jersey and Vermont.

Katia, the second hurricane of the June-through-November Atlantic season, has kept forecasters guessing for days about its potential threat to the United States.

Berg said the latest five-day forecast predicted the hurricane would swing north and then northeastward from Thursday in between Bermuda and the U.S. mainland, pushed away from the East Coast by a developing low pressure trough.

That would guide the storm around a ridge of high pressure in the central Atlantic known as the Bermuda High.

"The steering flow right now is pushing the storm to the northwest but once it gets closer to the East Coast, it'll start feeling the effects of that trough a little bit more, and it's going to make that sharp turn around the Bermuda High and head out northeastward over the open Atlantic," Berg said.

ANOTHER TROPICAL WAVE MOVING WESTWARD

At 10 p.m. (0200 GMT Tuesday), Katia's center was located about 450 miles south of Bermuda, the mid-Atlantic British overseas territory that despite its small size is a global reinsurance hub.

Berg said there was still a one in 10 chance parts of the East Coast could experience tropical storm-force winds when Katia passed well offshore later this week, especially jutting coastal areas like North Carolina's Outer Banks and Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Bermuda could also experience such winds.

Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Lee tested New Orleans' flood defenses over the weekend, and on Monday its weakened remnants threatened to dump heavy rain on states from Texas to Florida.

The September 10 peak of the annual Atlantic hurricane season is approaching, and hurricane spotters were already watching another tropical wave, located southwest of the Cape Verde Islands off Africa.

That was moving westward and the NHC gave it a "high" chance of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours.

Forecasters have predicted a very active 2011 Atlantic season with between eight and 10 hurricanes, above the long-term June to November average of six to seven hurricanes.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Storm surge may force power cut to south New York City (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Utility Consolidated Edison said it does not plan a widespread shutdown of New York City's power ahead of Hurricane Irene, although it may impose precautionary power cuts early on Sunday in low-lying areas of downtown Manhattan, where flooding threats are higher.

A spokesman for New York's largest utility said around 6,000 customers south of the Brooklyn Bridge were most likely to be affected if the category 1 hurricane brings a serious storm surge.

The decision will be made between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. EDT (0600-1400 GMT) on Sunday, the company said, based on the likely storm surge and the time the storm eventually hits the United States' most densely populated city.

ConEd will shut down 10 miles of steam generation lines out of about 110 miles affecting about 50 customers, John Miksad, senior vice president of electric operations, said during a conference call.

ConEd is expecting an additional 400 to 450 crew members to come in from across the country to assist with the storm response.

The utility said the storm does not pose a major threat to the gas system.

(Reporting by Jeanine Prezioso and David Sheppard; editing by Vicki Allen)

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Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days.

"The magnetic storm that is soon to develop probably will be in the moderate to strong level," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

He said solar storms this week could affect communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellites and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin.

An aurora, called aurora borealis or the northern lights in northern latitudes, is a natural light display in the sky in the Arctic and Antarctic regions caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.

Major disruptions from solar activity are rare but have had serious impacts in the past.

In 1989, a solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec, Canada, leaving about six million people without power for several hours.

The largest solar storm ever recorded was in 1859 when communications infrastructure was limited to telegraphs.

The 1859 solar storm hit telegraph offices around the world and caused a giant aurora visible as far south as the Caribbean Islands.

Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks. Papers caught fire. And many telegraph systems continued to send and receive signals even after operators disconnected batteries, NOAA said on its website.

A storm of similar magnitude today could cause up to $2 trillion in damage globally, according to a 2008 report by the National Research Council.

"I don't think this week's solar storms will be anywhere near that. This will be a two or three out of five on the NOAA Space Weather Scale," said Kunches.

SOLAR SCALE

The NOAA Space Weather Scale measures the intensity of a solar storm from one being the lowest intensity to five being the highest, similar to scales that measure the severity of hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The first of the three solar explosions from the sun this week already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact, Kunches said, noting, the second was passing the Earth now and "seems to be stronger."

And the third, he said, "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days. It could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all."

Power grid managers receive alerts from the Space Weather Prediction Center to tell them to prepare for solar events, which peak about every 12 years, Tom Bogdan, director of the center said.

He said the next peak, called a solar maximum, was expected in 2013.

"We're coming up to the next solar maximum, so we expect to see more of these storms coming from the sun over the next three to five years," Bogdan said.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Alden Bentley)

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Japan begins power restrictions (AFP)

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan on Friday began restricting electricity consumption in the Tokyo and Tohoku regions, more than three months after a tsunami sent nuclear reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The power-saving drive, which for many began shortly after the huge March 11 quake and tsunami but which became official Friday, will last through the peak summer months to September to cut blackout risks after the loss of capacity.

Large companies that violate the decree to cut useage by 15 percent will face fines of up to one million yen ($12,400). Smaller users and households have also been asked to voluntarily cut power use by 15 percent.

To cope, Japan has taken its annual summer "Cool Biz" campaign -- aimed at limiting air conditioner use and encouraging workers to ditch jackets and ties -- to a new level.

Factories have changed shifts to make use of cooler evenings, early mornings and lower-demand weekends, prompting nursery schools to also open weekends to cater for the needs of working parents.

Companies such as Sony have brought their business days forward by an hour in order to finish earlier.

Railway operators have increased train services in the early morning to coincide with moves by Japanese firms to start the work day earlier.

The power-saving restrictions will be in effect through to September 22 in Tokyo Electric's service area and through September 9 in Tohoku Electric's territory.

Hospitals providing emergency treatment and shelters for evacuees from the March 11 disaster are exempted. The reduction target will be relaxed to up to 10 percent for medical, nursing-care and transportation service providers.

On Wednesday temperatures soared to 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) in Tokyo and air conditioner use pushed consumption to 93 percent of capacity, raising fears that the capital may yet face blackouts as the summer heats up.

Even utilities not directly affected by the earthquake and tsunami have not restarted nuclear reactors that were undergoing maintenance at the time, due to objections from local governments amid a wave of anti-nuclear sentiment.

Only 19 of Japan's 54 reactors are now operating, with more due to shut down for regular checks. Japan usually generates about 30 percent of its power from nuclear plants.

Ratings agency Moody's on Friday said it had downgraded the ratings of nine Japanese utilities, citing increased regulatory uncertainty following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

There are worries that restrictions on power consumption may slow the country's recovery from recession, after the earthquake and tsunami hammered Japanese production and the economy contracted by an annualised 3.5 percent in January-March.

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Midwest storms leave thousands without power (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power in the Midwest on Wednesday, a day after severe weather tore through the region and parts of the South.

A slow-moving storm system drenched the central part of the nation, bringing large hail and winds of up to 100 miles per hour from Chicago to Dallas, grounding planes, stranding passengers and delaying commutes in Chicago.

About 220,000 customers in Chicago and its suburbs were without power Wednesday afternoon, down from 430,000. Many could remain so for at least another day.

"We anticipate 90 percent will be restored by midnight tomorrow," said ComEd spokeswoman Tabrina Davis.

In Mount Prospect, a Chicago suburb, large trees snapped or were uprooted, and roofs were damaged, according to the National Weather Service. "This damage is consistent with straight line winds of 90 to 100 mph," the service said.

Commuters on Metra trains in the Chicago area experienced delays due to fallen trees and branches on tracks, as well as power outages that knocked out signals.

Airlines operating at O'Hare International Airport canceled more than 250 flights due to the storms and some flights were delayed, the Chicago Department of Aviation reported on Wednesday morning.

The severe weather hit hardest in Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin up into northern Indiana and southern Michigan, according to AccuWeather.com.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of the Midwest ahead of Tuesday's storms.

Early storm reports included four possible tornado sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin and several reports of funnel clouds, according to the weather service.

The agency said it was not yet clear if the sightings were multiple reports of the same potential twister.

Storm damage teams were in Blaine and Coon Rapids, Minnesota on Wednesday to assess the damage and determine if there were any tornadoes, spokesman Chris Vaccaro said.

As the storms track east, the threat for severe weather on Wednesday was expected to move into the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Paul Walker.

Residents in Tennessee also felt the wrath of severe weather as thunderstorms and high winds rolled across the region on Tuesday striking most intensely in Knoxville.

Thousands remained without power in that east Tennessee city on Wednesday.

Further south in Dallas more than 22,000 customers were without power after storms shattered a rain record set in 1926, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The severe weather is set to continue as high temperatures are expected to reach triple digits in Dallas and other areas of Texas and nearby states in the coming days.

Areas in Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, Vermont and New York remain at risk from flooding, and thunderstorms, hail, and strong wind are forecasted across the country, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

(Reporting by Timothy Ghianni; Writing by Mary Wisniewski, Lauren Keiper and Molly O'Toole; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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Storm kills Amish teen, power outages in Northeast (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Mid-Atlantic is expected to be battered by another round of severe weather over the weekend just as a previous series of storms and heat subside.

Damaging winds, hail and lightning were expected on Saturday during the late afternoon or evening as the threat of severe weather loomed in New York, Pennsylvania and south through Virginia, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist John Feernick.

The latest severe weather predictions come on the heels of Thursday's lightning storms that left thousands in the Northeast without power and killed an Amish teenager rushing to bring in hay before the rain struck.

Thunderstorms had rumbled through the region late Thursday, marked by dramatic and deadly lightning strikes.

Before the rain reached southeastern Pennsylvania, Levi Lantz, 13, was working his Amish family's farm in Christiana Borough when he was struck by lighting and killed, according to Eric Bieber, chief deputy coroner of Lancaster County.

Lantz was baling hay with his father when he was electrocuted by the lightning, Bieber said. Lantz's father was driving a team of horses about 30 feet away from his son and felt a slight tingling sensation from the electrical charge, he said.

"They were trying to get the hay in before the rain started," Bieber said.

Further west, in Tennessee, a second possible weather related death on Thursday was reported at the Bonnaroo music festival, which was gripped by stifling heat. The body of a 32-year-old woman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was found outside her tent at the festival and heat exhaustion may have played a role, authorities said.

Throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a line of severe thunderstorms on Thursday brought strong winds and hail to communities from Washington, D.C., to Maine, according to National Weather Service reports.

Wind, downpours and lightning strikes in Connecticut caused damage and more than 140,000 power outages at the peak, the state's emergency management agency reported.

Later on Friday, 42,000 customers remained without power in what was expected to be a multi-day outage, according to emergency management officials.

New York officials reported roughly 13,000 customers remained in the dark statewide on Friday at mid-day with the bulk of outages in the lower Hudson Valley. Power was expected to be restored fully by midnight on Saturday, officials said.

The intense weather ushered in more moderate temperatures after days of unseasonable heat.

Temperatures across the region were expected to remain warm in some spots, but Friday's weather "is going to be a lot more tolerable than the last two days," said John Koch, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

After the weekend storm system passes, cooler air was expected to bring some relief to the Northeast early next week, according to AccuWeather.com.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper and Daniel Lovering; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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Storm kills Amish teen in Pennsylvania, power out in Northeast (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – Thousands remained without power across the Northeast on Friday in the wake of severe lightning storms that killed an Amish teenager rushing to bring in hay before the rain struck.

Thunderstorms had rumbled through the region late Thursday, marked by dramatic and deadly lightning strikes.

Before the rain reached southeastern Pennsylvania, Levi Lantz, 13, was working his Amish family's farm in Christiana Borough when he was struck by lighting and killed, according to Eric Bieber, chief deputy coroner of Lancaster County.

Lantz was baling hay with his father when he was electrocuted by the lightning, Bieber said. Lantz's father was driving a team of horses about 30 feet away from his son and felt a slight tingling sensation from the electrical charge, he said.

"They were trying to get the hay in before the rain started," Bieber said.

Throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a line of severe thunderstorms brought strong winds and hail to communities from Washington, D.C., to Maine, according to National Weather Service reports.

Wind, downpours and lightning strikes in Connecticut caused damage and more than 140,000 power outages at the peak, the state's emergency management agency reported.

By early Friday, 62,000 customers remained without power in what was expected to be a multi-day outage, according to Connecticut Light & Power.

New York officials reported roughly 18,000 customers remained in the dark statewide on Friday morning with the bulk of outages in the lower Hudson Valley.

Local teams were managing clean-up efforts, said William Peat, spokesman for the office of emergency management in New York.

The intense weather ushered in more moderate temperatures after days of unseasonable heat.

Temperatures across the region were expected to remain warm in some spots, but Friday's weather "is going to be a lot more tolerable than the last two days," said John Koch, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

New York looked forward to temperatures in the mid 80s compared to normal readings in the upper 70s. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was expected to reach the upper 80s while residents in Boston anticipated cooler weather in the low 70s.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper and Daniel Lovering; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jerry Norton)

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Storm lashes southern Michigan, 30,000 without power (Reuters)

DETROIT (Reuters) – Residents of southern Michigan were cleaning up on Monday after a violent storm ripped through the region, leaving at least 30,000 people without power, authorities said.

The Sunday storm hit northern Illinois with heavy rains and lightning, canceling at least 400 flights at Chicago airports, before raking a stretch of southern Michigan from Kalamazoo to Detroit. No deaths or injuries were reported, officials said.

The storm's 60-mile-per-hour winds drove heavy rain, uprooted hundreds of trees, ripped the roofs off buildings, and twisted billboards in and around Battle Creek, a city of 50,000 about 120 miles west of Detroit.

"As of right now we are going around taking trees off of houses, clearing out roadways, and pushing all of the debris aside so emergency vehicles can get to people who need it," said Tyler Upston, 24, who owns a landscaping business in Battle Creek. "Tomorrow we will start the full clean up."

About 34,000 people were still without power in Battle Creek's Calhoun County on Monday and "a significant number of Michigan residents are without power throughout the area hit by the storm," said Bob Dukesherer, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

"The storm was racing and moving over 50 miles per hour at times and with that forward speed it comes up on you very quickly," Dukesherer said.

Upston was at a friend's lake house as the storm swept in.

"It looked like a huge blanket coming across the sky," Upston said. "The rain was coming harder than hard. Everything was kicking up. Scrubs and trees were flying everywhere. Lawn chairs were flying from one neighbor's house to another."

Skies on Monday were clear in the Midwest from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico as hot, humid air pushed temperatures into the low 90 degree range, forecasters said.

But they warned that conditions for possible severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes could return on Monday night in the central Plains and upper Midwest.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by Peter Bohan)

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