Hurricane Irene knocked out power to 1.8 million homes and businesses, disrupted oil refineries and forced nuclear plants to reduce power as it barrelled toward New York City Reuters reports.

As the Southeast made small progress toward restoring power as Irene spun northward, blackouts in Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey jumped.

Only 19,000 customers faced outages in New York City, but Consolidated Edison warned that downtown Manhattan, including Wall Street, could face further blackouts as low lying areas flooded.

Local forecasters said the path of Irene was shifting westward, raising the prospect of 10-foot storm surges.