Thursday morning as it plowed into Virginia. More than 2.5 million customers were in the dark, and the storm left a trail of widespread wind damage through the South and Southeast. Zeta may be more than 750 miles inland from where it made landfall, but the system remained a powerful post-tropical storm. At least six people have died and more than 2.1 million customers are without power Thursday after former Hurricane Zeta hit the Gulf Coast and rushed inland.
Zeta — the 27th storm of the Atlantic hurricane season — made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 storm Wednesday before weakening to a post-tropical cyclone by Thursday afternoon. The storm was still packing winds of 50 mph as of 5 p.m. ET Thursday as it approached the southern tip of New Jersey. But the storm was forecast to move out over the western Atlantic later Thursday night, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Officials asked people to stay off the roads due to downed power lines with possible live wires. There were no reports of significant flooding in the city, according to local officials. But there was coastal flooding and some vessels broke loose from barges, damaging bridges.
The governor’s office said the damaged bridges would be inspected to determine whether they are passable.
Power outages also presented problems for polling places, and Edwards said restoring power to those locations was a priority. A task force has been formed to ensure there are alternate polling places for those that remain out of service, the governor said.
