Power Outage, Storm | featured news

A massive storm system brings mayhem to a swathe of the US South, leaving two people dead and thousands of households without electricity. One person died when an apparent twister hit the state of Georgia, overturning cars on a motorway.

Electrons work for free, except, of course in major storms -- as several prominent websites discovered... Lost sites beginning [Monday] night included the Huffington Post, Gawker and the blog Mediaite. Huffington Post was back by Tuesday morning, but the site was a bit skimpier. According to a statement posted on a website of the more traditional kind, CBS News, the problem seemed to be flooding.

Monster Storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast Monday, killing at least 16 people, hurling a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City and knocking out power to more than 7.5 million across the East Coast.

Storm-related outages at an Amazon data center in Ashburn prompted some congressional officials on Monday to question whether the federal government is moving too swiftly to put important data on private-sector cloud computing servers.

Nearly 1.4 million homes and businesses in the eastern United States remained without power amid a heat wave on Tuesday, and storm damage forced many Fourth of July celebrations to be canceled.

More than 2.1 million people from Illinois to Virginia remained without power Monday morning after violent storms struck over the weekend, and a heat wave continued to blanket much of the region.

A storm hits Connecticut and causes hundreds of thousands to lose power. Utility companies take a week or longer to restore it. Public outrage leads to state investigations. Officials order service improvements.

From North Carolina to Pennsylvania, Hurricane Irene appeared to have fallen short of the doomsday predictions. But with rivers still rising, and roads impassable because of high water and fallen trees, it could be days before the full extent of the damage is known. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses along the coast lost power, and at least 14 deaths were blamed on the storm.

After pounding the Carolinas Saturday morning, Hurricane Irene churned up the Eastern Seaboard Saturday night with a fury that left at least eight people dead and 1.4 million homes and businesses without power.

Alabama is the latest state to suffer from a widespread southern storm system as early morning thunderstorms packing tornadoes and high winds snapped trees, cut off power and left people trapped in home and vehicles.