• Holiday travel alert: Central US storm brings flight disruptions, deadly blizzard, and a tornado

    The powerful storm made for dicey driving conditions in Iowa, causing a 25-car pileup. In Wisconsin, the governor declared a state of emergency. And in the South, several tornadoes spawned from the same weather system. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

    Miguel Llanos writes

    The first major wintry storm of the season hammered the Midwest on Thursday, causing a pileup in blizzard conditions that killed three people, dumping a foot of snow in some areas and creating travel problems during one of the busiest periods of the year. Those travel woes could extend into the Northeast, with high winds and rain expected there Friday.


    Nearly 600 flights were canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Thursday, according to FlightStats, and an additional 700 were grounded at Kansas City International, Midway (Chicago), Detroit Metropolitan, Minneapolis-St. Paul International and other Midwest airports.

    Southwest Airlines canceled all flights at Midway starting at 4:30 p.m. local time, NBCChicago.com reported.

    Full coverage of the storm at The Weather Channel

    The storm system also spawned a tornado that flipped vehicles in Mobile, Ala., and cut power to 400,000 homes and businesses. Some 130,000 were still without power Thursday afternoon. 

    At least six deaths were tied to the snowstorms: In Iowa, three people died Thursday in a pileup involving more than 30 vehicles on Interstate 35, NBC affiliate WHO-TV reported; in Wisconsin, slick road conditions led to two fatalities; and in Utah, a woman who tried to walk for help after her car became stuck in snow was found dead, officials said late Wednesday. Search and rescue crews on snowmobiles found her buried in the snow just a few miles from her car.

    Snow, whipped by 50 mph wind gusts, have been causing white outs and leaving residents in the dark. The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel reports.

    Blizzard or winter storm warnings were issued for 16 states on Thursday, Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Seidel told TODAY.

    Northeast cities can expect rain and high winds from the system Friday morning, said NBC meteorologist Bill Karins. Most of the snow should move into Canada Friday night.

    A foot of snow fell on Des Moines, Iowa, by early Thursday and residents across the state were urged to stay off the roads.

    "Because of the wind, travel is pretty treacherous, especially into Iowa, as the storm moves east," National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Dergan said.

    The snow cover will drag temperatures much lower in Iowa and Nebraska, he added. "We're talking single digits. We may even see some sub-zero temperatures in Nebraska. This cold weather will stick around for several days, maybe until the day after Christmas. So we're definitely going to have a white Christmas."

    Iowa State Police

    Some of the vehicles involved in a pileup on Interstate 35 in Iowa are seen Thursday.

    Blowing snow led to school closures in parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. All state government offices also closed in Iowa. Storms in those four states left around 130,000 homes without power. 

    "Thundersnow" was reported in Iowa Wednesday night, as thunder and lightning accompanied the storm as it trekked across the state. 

    Dietra Tate / NBC 15

    This vehicle at a car dealership was flipped over by a storm in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday, Dec. 20.

    In Alabama, a tornado peeled the roofs off homes and buildings and toppled vehicles in Mobile, but caused no serious injuries, Al.com reported. Arkansas also saw damage from high winds.

    The storm system earlier delivered heavy snow and strong winds to parts of the West, where trucks tangled on icy roads on the Oregon and California state line.

    Snowstorm prompts state of emergency in Wisconsin

    In West Texas, winds from the same system kicked up a dust storm Wednesday that caused accidents along Interstate 27, resulting in one death and more than a dozen injuries, NBC affiliate KCBD reported.

    At Dallas-Fort Worth airport, American Airlines said it canceled about 120 flights Wednesday night due to the storm. 

    In Nebraska, snow blowing sideways on Wednesday night forced the closure of a 146-mile stretch of Interstate 80, a major east-west highway. 

    Much of the nation is dealing with a big blast of winter as a massive snowstorm barrels from the Rockies to the Midwest, with some parts of Colorado buried under more than a foot of snow. NBC's Mike Seidel reports.

    In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. Schools were canceled in advance of heavy snowfall and the University of Wisconsin-Madison postponed Thursday’s final exams.

    Before the storm, several Midwest cities had broken records for the number of consecutive days without measurable snow.

    In Chicago, people made a run on snow shovels and salt ahead of what should be the first snow to hit the city in 290 days (the record is 296). 

    The storm has package delivery companies nervously checking the weather forecast during this busy time of year. "We’re closely monitoring the storm," FedEx spokesman Scott Fiedler told NBC News. "We have a team of 15 meteorologists who track the weather around the world every day."

    Related: UPS, FedEx weather experts work on timely deliveries
    Related: Chicago braces for 'thundersnow'
    Related: Bad in US? Try Russia, where some parts as low as 50 below
    Related: Slideshow of wintry scenes around the world

    Along the East Coast, the I-95 corridor isn't expected to see much, if any, snow.

    "Snow may make it as close to New York City as Western Connecticut but right now, other than a few flurries Friday night, I think New York City through Boston will be mostly snow-free," Tom Niziol, the winter weather expert at The Weather Channel, told NBC News.

    "Areas to the southeast of the Great Lakes, from Cleveland through Syracuse will get heavier snowfall," he added. "Higher elevations from the Adirondacks through the western slopes of the Central Appalachians will also get snow."

    NBC News' Isolde Raftery and A. Pawlowski, as well as The Associated Press and Reuters, contributed to this report.

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  • Love among the ruins: Sandy decimates community, but wedding goes on

    John Makely / NBC News

    James Keane, a volunteer with the Rockaway Point F.D and a full-time dispatcher for the FDNY, and his fiancee Kristen Diffendale on Sunday in Breezy Point.

    Miranda Leitsinger writes

    BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- The wedding had been two years in the making: The church was booked, the custom fuchsia and blue Converse sneakers for the bridesmaids were ordered, and the firehouse was secured as a staging ground for the groomsmen.

    But then Superstorm Sandy struck, flooding the firehouse, forcing the church to turn into a command center, and scattering the guests and the newlyweds-to-be, as well as the custom Converse, less than a month before the big day: Friday, Nov. 23.

    Now, with much of their Breezy Point community in ruins, Kristen Diffendale, 29, and James Keane, 28, are turning their wedding into a celebration of what the storm couldn’t take away.

    “All of our family and friends are from Breezy Point and from Rockaway (another hard-hit community nearby) so we figured this is, it’s not only a night for us, it’s a night for all of our friends and family to get to some sort of normalcy, to feel like everything’s alright, to be away from this for a day,” she said. “We want to give that to our friends, just a night of just absolute back to normal.”

    As Sandy swept through the seaside community of Breezy Point on Oct. 29, Diffendale hunkered down at the home she shares with her future in-laws and her three-year-old daughter, Madison Shea. Keane, her fiancé and Madison’s dad, was in Brooklyn working as a dispatcher for the New York City Fire Department.

    'What Thanksgiving is all about': Breezy Point teen lifts spirits in devastated hometown

    “It was pretty scary … I was a little worried when the water came up. We just, we didn’t know where it was coming from and we figured out it was the ocean that was coming towards us,” she said. “And then we saw the fire, we saw the glow … and then I started to get really nervous because it wasn’t stopping.”

    In Breezy Point in Queens, a couple said "I do" despite Superstorm Sandy. NBC's Kate Snow reports.

    'I thought everybody was gone'
    Keane lost cellphone contact with his family around 7 p.m. that night. He got permission to leave his job and raced to a firehouse close to his home. But due to the flooding, no fire trucks were being allowed into the area in southern Queens where Breezy Point is located.

    When that order lifted, and he was finally able to get on a truck speeding to the area, he spotted the fires lighting up the night sky.

    John Makely / NBC News

    James Keane and his fiancee, Kristen Diffendale, hope their wedding will provide respite for their guests.

    “I didn’t know what was happening down here. I thought it was gone down here,” he said this week, standing amid volunteers and victims near the relief center in their once idyllic community. 

    “He thought I left him,” Diffendale said, looking into his eyes, breaking from the couple’s otherwise jovial banter.

    “I thought everybody was gone,” Keane said.


    Their home took in several feet of water in the basement and there was damage to the roof, but the dwelling did not burn. The family, however, spent a frightful night riding out the storm, with Diffendale clutching her grandmother's rosary and in tears. 

    Once Keane, a volunteer firefighter at the Rockaway Point Volunteer Fire Department, learned his family was all right, he joined the effort to battle the blaze.

    Diffendale and Keane are among the lucky ones in Breezy Point, where Sandy’s hurricane-force winds sparked a six-alarm blaze that burned more than 100 homes to the ground. It is believed that the rest of the 2,100 homes in this close-knit community were also damaged, many due to flooding.

    PhotoBlog: Cooking a Thanksgiving feast in Breezy Point

    The couple was unsure about keeping their post-Thanksgiving wedding date in the aftermath of the disaster. Like many of their friends and neighbors, they have been busy with the relief effort: he, cleaning and gutting flooded basements, and she, hauling supplies to victims.

    “For a while, people were asking, ‘What about the wedding?’” said Diffendale, who works in special education. “But we were, like, ‘We’re worrying about what’s going on right now.' … We put ourselves last for a couple of weeks.”

    But as the date approached, and more people asked them not to postpone their impending nuptials, the couple decided the community needed a party.

    “We’ve been planning this wedding for two years and we had to re-plan it in two weeks,” Keane said.

    Slideshow: Recovering after Sandy

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    Residents of the Northeast are still picking up the pieces after Superstorm Sandy.

    Launch slideshow

    'People need a break from this'
    The change in plans entailed: moving their wedding to a hall in Long Island and getting permission from leaders at Saint Frances de Sales Parish to still have their marriage recognized by the church; booking rooms at a local hotel for Keane and the groomsmen because the firehouse was out of commission; and arranging for buses to transport many of the 300 guests to the wedding, since so many were forced to relocate.

    Diffendale said they weren’t “stressing the little stuff anymore,” and her only near-Bridezilla moment came while tracking down the special-made sneakers, which have the wedding date inscribed on them. The mail delivery was interrupted by the storm and because the shoes were in different packages, they ended up in different locations. Diffendale was told the shoes would be delivered Nov. 28, after the wedding, but a shipping agent helped her locate them.

    Read more coverage of Breezy Point on NBCNews.com

    “People need a break from this,” Keane said of the weeks-long cleanup and repair in chilly temperatures. “They need a break from doing this every day.”

    The wedding has taken on new meaning for the couple, too.

    “Absolutely,” Diffendale said. “We thought each other were dead.”

    “You thought you had, I don’t know, nothing," Keane said. "I didn’t even know there was even a neighborhood here anymore ... when I came down."

    Despite the disaster that befell their community, they don’t expect a sullen affair.

    “We’re an Irish neighborhood so we know how to have a good time,” Diffendale said, laughing. “It’s going to be a very good time.”

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  • In wake of nor'easter, 'patience is the name of the game'

    Those who lost their homes during Hurricane Sandy are salvaging what they can from the wreckage, and trying to stay afloat financially as they cope with the aftermath of the storm. NBC's Ann Curry reports.

    Miranda Leitsinger and Miguel Llanos, NBC News writes

    Updated at 11:24 p.m. ET: BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- After waking up to several inches of snow and more than 200,000 new power outages, residents in areas battered by Superstorm Sandy on Thursday got back to the long-term work of rebuilding. 

    Miranda Leitsinger

    Snow dusted debris outside homes Thursday in Breezy Point, a community in the Rockaways section of New York City.

    "Patience is the name of the game here," said Joseph Murray in Breezy Point, where snow from the nor’easter dusted the New York City community destroyed last week by flooding and a fire. 

    Families here on Thursday continued efforts to save their waterlogged homes from mold, with some piling items on the layer of snow in 40-degree weather. 

    New York City and Long Island will begin rationing gas to relieve frustration and long lines at the pump, NBCNewYork.com reported. The rationing does not apply to emergency vehicles, taxis or individual gas cans.

    Murray, 27, was at his family’s home after sanitation workers cleared out their pile of garbage, leaving three salvageable nightstands and a lamp standing outside. 

    "Be patient with Mother Nature  because she doesn’t care about any of us," was how Murray rationalized the bizarre bouts of weather. "Let her do her thing and then when she’s ready to let you do your thing, she will."

    Cleanup crews already overextended from Hurricane Sandy are working around the clock to clear snow that recently fell across the region, causing more people to lose power. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.

    Murray did have an eye on Friday’s weather forecast, noting that "it’s going to be 60 degrees, this is all going to melt." 

    By late Thursday, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island had their power fully restored. New York and New Jersey saw a drop in the number of customers affected by the nor'easter. Now about 60,000 customers are without power between the two states because of the storm; more than half a million remain without power total in the two states, including outages caused by Sandy.

    West Virginia, however, has struggled to bring power customers back online.

    The overnight nor’easter boasted wind gusts of more than 50 mph and dropped heavy snow on already-weakened tree limbs, leading to new power outages. 

    In New Jersey alone, 167,000 homes and businesses lost power overnight, Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday. "This sets us back about a day" in terms of getting all power restored, he added. 

    "We're right back to the same situation," Kirk Walker of Hackensack, N.J., told NBCNewYork.com after power went out for the third time at his home since Sandy struck. 

    "They said it was gonna be a rough winter," Walker added. "Sign of things to come, I guess."

    Officials there on Thursday said they had convinced the local utility to scrap its policy requiring that each home without power be inspected before power is restored, Newsday.com reported. 

    With the new outages, some 700,000 customers were without power across the Northeast around midday. That number was reduced to some 600,000 by early evening.

    Are you left in the lurch after Sandy? 

    Record snowfall totals were recorded across the area:

    • New York’s Central Park received 4.4 inches of snow on Wednesday -- a record for a Nov. 7 and the earliest 4-inch total in the park's history, NBCNewYork.com reported. By Thursday morning the total had reached 4.7 inches.
    • Newark, N.J., got 6 inches by Thursday -- more snow in 24 hours than during any previous November on record.
    • Bridgeport, Conn., received 3.5 inches of snow, beating the Nov. 7 record of 2 inches set in 1953.

    Some areas inland got 12 to 13 inches of snow.


    "This is a classic nor'easter," NBC meteorologist Al Roker said on TODAY, "just very early."

    PhotoBlog: Hot meals on Staten Island

    Conditions were still miserable Thursday morning. In New York City, winds were around 25 mph and it was 36 degrees with showers forecast before sunny skies on Friday.

    In New Jersey, parts of which saw 9 inches of snow, police said ice and snow contributed to the deaths of two people in a car whose driver was speeding, NBCPhiladelphia reported.

    Two people also died in Connecticut in traffic accidents attributed to snow, The Associated Press reported.

    Full NBC coverage of Sandy's aftermath

    Hundreds were evacuated ahead of the nor'easter, some because of flooding fears and others due to post-Sandy logistics.

    John Makely / NBC News

    Medeleine Dobriner was moved by the Red Cross to the Manresa Jesuit Center shelter on Staten Island so that her earlier shelter, a school, could reopen.

    Medeleine Dobriner of New Dorp on Staten Island was among the latter -- having to move because her shelter was in a school that was reopening.

    "This is my third shelter and usually change is good," Dobriner, 66, told NBC News, "but not in this case."

    Throughout the region, people wore coats indoors as they endured yet another night without heat.

    "I thought I was lucky when power was restored last Thursday, but last night it went out again," said Michael Platt, an electrician from Toms River, N.J., who estimated a foot of snow fell in his area. "The kids have been home for nearly two weeks and I'm not working, and when I'm not working I'm not making any money. This hasn't been easy." 

    "Can you believe this? Enough is enough," added Cindy Casey, whose Belle Harbor home one block from the beach in the Rockaways was swamped by Sandy, as she looked out at the snow blanketing the neighborhood devastated by flooding and fire. 

    Some of those who had weathered Sandy told NBCNewYork.com they felt like a cruel joke was being played on them.

    "Kind of laughing about it at this point," said Danny Arnedos, of Oyster Bay, Long Island. "To go from a hurricane to a nor'easter and driving in the snow in 10 days is pretty unbelievable."

    "I am waiting for the locusts and pestilence next," New Jersey Gov. Christie said Wednesday. 

    Coastal flooding proved minimal, but commuter bus and train services were disrupted by the storm, with the Long Island Rail Road briefly shutting down all operations to the city's eastern suburbs on Wednesday night.

    Gasoline remained in short supply in the New York City area, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday announced rationing based on odd and even number license plates.

    Official: NY disaster chief fired over tree removal

    Airports saw 1,600 canceled flights on Wednesday due to the storm. Some 600 more flights were scratched Thursday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware. The majority of those are in the New York area.

    The losses from Superstorm Sandy are still rough, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he had seen a report estimating $50 billion in damage and economic losses across the region, with $33 billion in New York state.

    "That's a staggering number," he said.

    Slideshow: Recovering after Sandy

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    A snowstorm hits the Northeast as residents are still struggling to pick up the pieces after Superstorm Sandy.

    Launch slideshow

    NBC's John Makely as well as Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • 'Devastation ... like we've never seen' in twister-hit town

    At least 12 people were killed after devastating tornadoes and storms steamrolled through the Midwest and South. NBC's Lester Holt and TODAY's Al Roker report.

    NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services writes

     

    Updated at 8:45 p.m. ET: HARRISBURG, Ill. -- At least 12 people were killed -- including several crushed by debris -- as tornadoes marched across the Midwest, flattening parts of several towns including the tourist hub of Branson, Mo.

    Hardest hit was Harrisburg, where four women and two men died, some 100 others were injured and more than 200 homes were destroyed or damaged.

    Most if not all the Harrisburg dead were killed by a home tossed atop their own property early Wednesday, a witness said.

    Whitney Curtis / Getty Images

    Steve McDonald stands among debris from the home of his mother-in-law, Mary Osman, who was killed in the twister that raced through Harrisburg, Ill.

    "It's a house on top of a house," said Mike Hancock, 29, who with several others tried to rescue the victims. "We crawled in there as much as we could. Then there wasn't enough stability, the whole foundation was shaking. We had to get out of there," he said.

    "We have devastation in our community like we've never seen," Mayor Eric Gregg told a press conference, where officials said the twister had peak winds of 170 mph, making it an EF-4 on the 1-5 scale used by the National Weather Service, with 5 being the most severe.

    "There are hundreds of homes damaged, millions of dollars in damage," he added. "The hospital is severely damaged. There's a mall with 10 stores that was destroyed."

    Forecasters warned more twisters could strike the Tennessee Valley and southern Appalachians through Wednesday evening as the storm system moved east.

    Rock Center reports on the aftermath of the powerful tornadoes that ripped through America's heartland, killing at least nine people. The twisters blew houses on top of each other and toppled buildings as they hopscotched through parts of Missouri, Illinois and Kansas. NBC's Lester Holt and The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore report from Harrisburg, Ill., one of the towns hit hardest by the tornadoes.

    Three other deaths were reported in Missouri, where a suspected tornado hit a mobile home park outside the town of Buffalo. One person died there and around a dozen people were injured. Two others died in the Cassville and Puxico areas of Missouri, state officials said. Three deaths were reported in eastern Tennessee, The Associated Press reported.

    In Harrisburg, police issued a curfew overnight and the area most impacted was evacuated as a precaution. Some 3,300 customers were without power in the town of about 10,000.

    In Kansas, 12 people were injured when a EF-2 tornado made a five-mile-long run through Harveyville on Tuesday night, officials said. Three of the injured were in critical condition, and 40 percent of the town suffered damage.

    NBC affiliate KSHB TV reported that an apartment complex and a church were among the damaged buildings in the town of about 250 people.

    Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback issued a disaster declaration for the area, parts of which were without power.

    NBC's Al Roker reports on the unseasonable tornadoes that ripped through Illinois.

    Other hard-hit areas included Branson and Lebanon in Missouri.

    In Branson, 32 people were treated at one hospital for injuries, mostly cuts and bruises. A tornado moved through downtown overnight, heavily damaging the city's famous theaters and hopscotching up Highway 76, uprooting road signs and scattering debris.

    Officials on Wednesday gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-2 and said it ran an 8- to 10-mile path.

    The injuries could have been far worse had the storm hit next week, when the tourist season picks up.

    "If it was a week later, it'd be a different story," said Bill Tirone, assistant general manager for the 530-room Hilton and adjacent Branson Convention Center, where windows were shattered and some rooms had furniture sucked away by high winds. Hotel workers were able to get all guests to safety as the storm raged.

    Mark Schiefelbein / AP

    Storm debris is piled near the entrance to the Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Mo., on Wednesday.

    John Moore, owner of the damaged Cakes-n-Creams '50s Diner, said the apparent twister appeared to "jump side to side" as it moved down the entertainment district, right through the convention center, across a lake and into a housing division.

    "The theater next to me kind of exploded. It went everywhere. The hotels on the two sides of me lost their roofs. Power lines are down. Windows are blown out," Moore said. "There's major, major destruction. There has to be millions dollars of damage all down the strip."

    Jennifer Verhaalen said she saw a white funnel cloud followed by a wall of rain as the storm closed in on the town around 1 a.m.

    She said she retreated to a back bedroom with her husband as the storm slammed into two hotel buildings, tearing the roof off one.

    PhotoBlog of the destruction

    Across the road, a strip mall lay in tatters, its roof missing and several walls collapsed.

    Branson has long been a touristy outdoor destination for visitors who came to see the beauty of the surrounding Ozarks. But the city rose to prominence in the 1990s largely due to the theater district, where venues featured the star power of country music and celebrities including the Osmonds and Andy Williams.  

    John Hanna / AP

    Damage in Harveyville, Kan., includes this home.

    In Lebanon, a tornado was reported at 12:25 a.m. and numerous reports came in of damage in the area.  A tractor-trailer was reported to have been blown off Interstate 44 nearby.

    Newburgh, Ind., also saw damage from severe storms. Several homes and a business were hit, though no injuries or deaths were reported.

    The National Weather Service said it was forecasting more tornadoes on Wednesday, including "one or two possibly strong" ones as well as "damaging wind over parts of the Tennessee Valley to southern Appalachians" into the evening.

    The system also skirted northern Arkansas, bringing gusts of up to 60 miles per hour in the northwest. A wall cloud was reported in Cherokee Village, where trees were scattered along roads, the weather service said. Residents of Clay County in northeastern Arkansas reported hail the size of golf balls, and similar-sized hail was reported in Mountain Home.

    Mathew Fowler / Harveyville Gazette via AP

    Damage is seen Wednesday morning in Harveyville, Kan., after an apparent tornado passed through Tuesday night.

    In northern Oklahoma, gusts of up to 80 mph flipped trailers and damaged homes near Cherokee.

    Tornado season normally starts in March, but it isn't unusual to see severe storms earlier in the year. Forecasters have a particularly difficult time assessing how serious a season will be in part because tornadoes are so unpredictable. This year, two people were killed by separate tornadoes in Alabama in January, and preliminary reports show 95 tornadoes struck that month.

    NBC News, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Priceless memories

    Editor's note: Doug promises to e-mail the photo as soon as he can.

    After two months of covering Katrina's arrival and horrible aftermath, I've discovered that it's the little things that unexpectedly touch me the most. This week, while videotaping a story in the hard hit area of Long Beach, Miss., I stumbled across one of those small keepsakes that left a lasting impression.

    We had stopped at the Friendship Oak, a 500-year-old tree that survived the storm, when we made the discovery. It's a slightly faded photograph of a young woman in a graduation gown, smiling from ear to ear, surrounded by what appears to be her parents beaming with pride. Judging from the clothing, it looks as though the picture was probably taken in the early 1970s... and judging from her enthusiastic smile it's clear she was excited about what the future held for her. I found it nestled in a bush, just a few hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico.

    Nearby, the million dollar mansions that once lined this stretch of U.S. 90 are now gone. They were torn off their foundations and washed away by a 20-foot storm surge, yet somehow this photograph survived.

    Just who this young smiling graduate is, and what became of her and her family is a mystery. I'd like to think she ventured off into the world, made her dreams come true and her parents proud. Who knows?  Maybe she grew up to own one of the beautiful houses that lined this famous beachfront before Katrina hit. The only thing I'm sure of is that hurricane Katrina unexpectedly swept away this precious family photo forever. It's the type of irreplaceable loss that thousands of Gulf Coast residents are coping with, and it's a loss you can't calculate.

  • Video: Inside the Pass Christian library

    The Pass Christian Police Department shared this video, shot by the officers who rode out Katrina's rising waters in the town library. Click here to watch the video (it's about 3:30 long and yes, you'll have to endure a :15 or :30 ad), or click here to read Martin's full post on the story, where you'll also find the video at the end.

  • Team East, aka Team Martin

    Marisa Buchanan and cameraman Brad Houston shot these photos on Monday.  We featured a couple of them in this post on that day.  Here are the rest.  Sorry it took so long to get them to you.  Now that we've figured out how to display multiple images in a photo "flipper," we'll aim to do more of these visual presentations as "After the Storm: The Long Road Back" continues.

  • Team West, aka Team Carl

    Two-and-a-half days into this Gulf Coast journey, it's time we introduced the teams. Marisa already mentioned the personnel who get Martin Savidge on air every night. I'll post more pictures from them soon. But first, here's a look at the cast of players that help Carl Quintanilla broadcast from towns west of New Orleans. They produce and edit their reports in the field, out of a satellite truck NBC News calls "Cowboy." Click "Next" below the photo to flip through the seven images.