Ernesto leaves 263,000 powerless in Virginia and Carolinas

NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Ernesto, downgraded to a tropical depression as it crossed into Virginia, knocked out power service to about 263,000 customers in Virginia and the Carolinas on Friday.
In Virginia, the storm hit the Dominion Virginia Power service territory in the Tidewater area the hardest, knocking out 190,000 customers.
That number will likely grow as the storm remains over Dominion territory for much of the rest of the day.
The remnants of Ernesto will be in the Richmond area by 8 p.m. EDT Friday and in the D.C. area by 8 a.m. Saturday.
In a release Friday, the utility, a subsidiary of Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc., said it appears the storm knocked tree limbs onto the power lines, causing most of the outages.
The power company, which serves more than 2.3 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina, said Ernesto would likely be an "east of Interstate 95" storm and it started to restage some of crews and contractors from the western part of its service area to the east to aid in restoration. {photo above: Shaniqua Greene, right, and Tiffany Ward check the mail in their flooded neighborhood in Wilmington, N.C. (AP Photo)

Ernesto Goes to New York
There's a Battle Royale going on in the atmosphere today and we've got ringside seats! Tropical Storm Ernesto is moving up from the south, bringing with it lots of rain and wind. At the same time the Andre the Giant of high pressure systems is moving southeastward from Quebec. Irresistable Ernesto wants to hug the coast as it moves northward, but when it hits immovable Andre, Ernesto is going to be shuffled off to Buffalo.




UPDATE 1: Hurricane John Strengthens; Baja California Threatened
After losing some strength along the West Coast of Mexico, Hurricane John has again become a "dangerous category three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale," according to the latest bulletin (8:00 a.m. PDT) from the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "Maximum sustained winds are near 115 mph/185 km/hr. with higher gusts. No significant change in strength is forecast for the next 24 hours." {image: Hurricane John is seen in this hand out satellite image from the National Hurricane Centre in Miami at 1745 Zulu (1745 GMT) August 29, 2006 with it's centerpoint located at Latitude: 14:56:33N Longitude: 99:47:00W. REUTERS/NOAA/Handout}

UPDATE: Ioke's 'super' winds damage Wake Island weather sensors
Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors yesterday as it lashed the atoll with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in more than a decade, the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters monitoring the atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawai'i said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.