At least six people are dead after Hurricane Zeta slammed into the Gulf Coast, leaving power outages and destruction before turning toward the Northeast. More than 1.9 million customers still were without power Thursday afternoon across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Due to the power outages, 15 counties in Georgia were forced to open early voting locations later in the day. In Douglas County, in the Atlanta metropolitan area, there wasn’t power at any of the six early voting locations, and none opened. Douglas County officials said the voting sites would reopen on Friday. Georgia requires every county to have three weeks of early voting.
Zeta, with winds reaching 110 mph, made landfall Wednesday as a Category 2 storm. Zeta is the strongest storm to hit the U.S. this late in the season since 1899, and it’s the fifth to strike Louisiana this hurricane season.
Zeta is now moving north, with gusty winds slamming the Carolinas and Virginia. Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia could see up to 4 inches and potential flooding. By Thursday evening, heavy rain hit Philadelphia, New York City and southern New England. Further north, in upstate New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, as much as 4 inches of snow is possible by Friday morning.
