Top developments:
Irene makes landfall in North Carolina
Weakens to Category 1 storm early Saturday, but is still dangerous
End of pier at Atlantic Beach, N.C., falls into water as rain, winds lash coast
At least 2.5 million under evacuation orders; 300,000 in NYC
Nearly 7,000 flights canceled through Monday
Hurricane Irene howled ashore in North Carolina with heavy winds, rain and surf on Saturday on a path threatening the densely populated U.S. East Coast with flooding and power outages.
The eye of the storm crossed the North Carolina coast near Cape Lookout around 7:30 a.m. ET, forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Irene was moving north-northeast along the coast and was expected to remain a hurricane as it hit the mid-Atlantic states on Saturday night and New England on Sunday.
With winds of 85 miles per hour, Irene had weakened to a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, but forecasters warned that it remained a large and dangerous storm.
New York City ordered unprecedented evacuations and transit shutdowns as states from the Carolinas to Maine declared emergencies due to Irene, whose nearly 600 mile width guaranteed a stormy weekend for tens of millions of people.
"We've never done a mandatory evacuation before and we wouldn't be doing it now if we didn't think this storm had the potential to be very serious,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in warning some 370,000 people living in low-lying areas.
He said the storm surge likely would be around 4-7 feet.
Roughly 2.5 million people have been ordered to evacuate up and down the East Coast.
At daybreak on the North Carolina coast, winds howled through the power lines, felling trees, rain fell in sheets and some streets were flooded.
In the port and holiday city of Wilmington, North Carolina, the streets were empty and the air was filled with the sound of pine trees cracking.
One unidentified man in the Wilmington area was washed away and feared to have drowned, emergency workers said.
NBC News reported early Saturday that the end of the Atlantic Beach Pier in Atlantic Beach, N.C., collapsed into the water.
Progress Energy, the local electrical utility, said around 200,000 customers throughout coastal North Carolina were without power.
A coastal town official in North Carolina said witnesses believed a tornado spawned by Irene lifted the roof off the warehouse of a car dealership in Belhaven on Friday night and damaged a mobile home, an outbuilding and trees. Six homes were reportedly damaged by the apparent tornado.
Nearly eight inches of rain were reported in areas of North Carolina.
Warren Lee, New Hanover County's director of emergency management, said the county was still evaluating damage in the Wilmington area but that, "We fared pretty well, given the predictions we had.""Our number of customers has tripled in the last day or two as people actually said 'Wow, this thing is going to happen,'" said Jack Gurnon, owner of a hardware store in Boston.
In summer beach season, hundreds of thousands of residents and vacationers had evacuated from Irene's path. Supermarkets and hardware stores were inundated with people stocking up on food, water, flashlights, batteries, generators and other supplies.
Airlines canceled nearly 7,000 flights over the weekend and all three New York area airports were to close to incoming flights at noon (1600 GMT) on Saturday.
"We're feeling the impacts now, but the worst is still to come," Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell told MSNBC-TV early Saturday, as rain bands from Irene started lashing the state. He said officials are especially concerned about coastal flooding.
President Barack Obama said the storm could be "extremely dangerous and costly" for a nation that recalls the destruction in 2005 from Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans, killed up to 1,800 people and caused $80 billion in damage.
AP