'With Hurricane Irene now much larger than Hurricane Katrina, 65 million people are expected to be impacted by the storm and several states have moved to declare a state of emergency.

Local, State and Federal officials are not taking the threat lightly either and have implemented a system of evacuations that include shut down mass transportation and major highways well in advance of the storm landing on the shores of the Mid-Atlantic states. The strategy has been called forced evacuations, even by CNN and it may be for the best.

Hurricane warnings have now been issued for NYC, Long Island and northward up to Massachusetts. The new warnings are also accompanied by an increase in the storm surge heights forecast which are now predicted to reach as high as 8 feet from the Chesapeake Bay all the way to Nantucket, MA. New York City has issued mandatory evacuations for the first time in history. The Jersey Shore has followed suit and evacuations in both areas are based on models of flooding predicted by the storm surge.'

Read more: Hurricane Irene: Traffic Jams 20 Miles Long… 2.5 Million Evacuated Ahead Of Extensive Storm Surge