The state was spared from severe surges.
The 400 megawatts that were added to the city's system last summer -- 10 house-sized generators built around the city by the New York Power Authority, sometimes in the face of lawsuits and claims of bias -- created a supply cushion for this summer at the same time that government-sponsored efficiency programs took the edge off the system's most severe surges in demand.
Several severe storm surge disasters have been observed since 2000, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Actually, the Northeast blackout of 2003 was not caused by a lack of power supply, it was because of events in the Midwest involving lines overloading for several hours, which created a severe power surge in excess of 3,500 megawatts that entered New York from the Midwest through Pennsylvania and continued into Canada.
This is not the first severe storm surge in Tacloban area, and a similar typhoon with 4.5 m storm surge occurred in 1897.
Here's a fresh view showing how computer simulations are converging on a disastrous trajectory for Hurricane Irene, which is almost assuredly bound for the densely populated corridor from Washington, D.C., through New York City: The threats range from severe storm surge along coasts to deluges and flash flooding inland and wind damage everywhere.
Thousands of houses were affected in Central Maryland, with severe storm surge flooding reported in Baltimore and Annapolis.
Later, the extratropical remnants of Ioke produced a severe storm surge along the Alaskan coastline, causing beach erosion.
Katrina ultimately moved ashore in southeastern Louisiana on August 29, where it caused severe storm surge flooding and catastrophic damage; it dissipated the following day.
The findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, suggest that increasingly severe storm surges could be anticipated as a result.
