11:40 pm – Hurricane Irene Watch

Hoboken is seeing hard rain picking up and the full brunt of the hurricane is expected in the early morning hours around 5:00 am.  The west side of town already saturated from earlier rains is faring poorly and it’s still early in the storm.  The Shoprite area is flooding and the lower part of the 4th ward is not doing much better.

The Wallace School is being evacuated as a precaution.  The State has opened the
Izod Center in the Meadowlands as another hurricane shelter.  Residents and city staff are on a bus moving people before the conditions worsen and travel becomes impossible.

Talking Ed Note: Tens of thousands are losing power with the severe conditions.  Atlantic County has seen almost 100,000 lose power while thousands of others in Central New Jersey are facing a similar predicament.  Earlier a Hudson Reporter story quoted PSE&G as saying the amount of power outages could take weeks to fix.