Storm

While the team huddled together, Sparks Coach Michael Cooper was about to rip into his players. Before he could, though, his players took care of it. They had a 12-point lead with five minutes 14 seconds remaining in Game 1 of their best-of-three Western Conference semifinals matchup with Seattle. But with the way the Storm kept chipping away at their lead, nothing was safe. Hence, the discussion during a timeout. "Sometimes the team has to do that and take responsibility like a veteran team like we do," Cooper said.

NEW YORK - Fallen trees blocked winding Greenwich Village streets normally jammed with tourists and taxis. Muddy sandbags squished against empty high-rises in the Financial District. The facade of a building had ripped off in Chelsea, leaving apartments bare to camera-toting crowds on the street. For a change, it wasn't just out-of-towners wandering slack-jawed at the sights of Manhattan. Facing a massive cleanup from Sandy's devastation Tuesday, New Yorkers were in a state of disbelief as they realized that America's largest city, for all its museums and Broadway shows, its noisy subways and neon-lighted squares, was no match for a super storm.

Irene shut down Broadway, took a bite out of Hollywood's box office, closed casinos in New Jersey and canceled thousands of East Coast flights. But the economic fallout had been predicted to be far worse. The full cost of the storm, which caused widespread flooding and has so far resulted in at least 22 deaths, was still uncertain as insurance experts began tallying the estimated damage Sunday. Overall, the storm, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical depression Sunday, could cost insurers $1.5 billion to $3 billion to cover claims for damaged homes, vehicles and businesses, said Jose Miranda, director of client advocacy at Eqecat Inc., a catastrophic risk management firm in Oakland.

South Korea struggled to recover Thursday from the nation's heaviest rainfall in decades, a torrential two-day downpour that triggered landslides and flooding, killed at least 57 people and left countless others missing or stranded. Military officials scrambled to retrieve explosives swept away by the storm. In one incident, a military ammunitions depot collapsed under a landslide, and officials said only half of the explosives, including 93 land mines, had been found. They also worked to retrieve numerous Korean War-era land mines that were dislodged by the storm from grounds near an air-defense unit outside Seoul.

A new storm was forecast to dump rain on Southern California today and Wednesday, but the system was not expected to pose a significant threat to hillside areas saturated by last week's torrential downpours, officials said. The rainfall will be light with some moderate to heavy bursts at times, according to the National Weather Service. The storm is expected to drop half an inch to as much as 1 1/2 inches of rain across the region, with possibly higher amounts in mountain regions.

An early winter storm swirled toward the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains late Tuesday after wreaking havoc in the Northwest and promising to make the busiest travel day of the year that much more complicated. The storm has created misery from Alaska to Washington state, where it is blamed for three deaths. In Utah, the state department of transportation closed Interstate 84 at the Idaho border as snow began to fall during rush hour. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir canceled its Tuesday night concert, and the University of Utah and Utah State University closed their campuses in the early afternoon.

Lumbering Hurricane Isaac's speed dropped to 7 mph by midnight Tuesday but maintained its 80-mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said.  The 350-mile-wide Category 1 storm came ashore  in southeastern Louisiana at 6:45 p.m., moving northwest. Its slow speed means it is likely to hover over at least three states -- Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- dumping rain for days. "Isaac [is] moving slowly along the coast of southeast Louisiana and producing a dangerous storm surge," the hurricane center said.

Recent storms dropped 2 inches of rain on Yosemite National Park , bringing snow to elevations above 8,000 feet and reviving one of the park's best-loved features: its waterfalls. Yosemite and Bridal Veil falls , which thunder in spring when swelled with runoff from winter snow pack, dried up in mid-October. It has been one of the driest years on record for Yosemite and the driest winter since 2007, according to a news release. "After such a dry period, seeing the waterfalls flowing again is spectacular," Park Superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement.

Electrons work for free, except, of course in major storms -- as several prominent websites discovered. When the former Hurricane Sandy -- now technically a cyclone -- hit the New York area, it cut power to hundreds of thousands of people, including some major Internet providers. Many seeking news, gossip and other information found themselves temporarily bereft and relying on other technologies such as television and radio and newspaper websites. PHOTOS: Sandy's huge impact Lost sites beginning Wednesday night included the Huffington Post, Gawker and the blog Mediaite.

Airlines have canceled more than 7,400 flights as Hurricane Sandy nears major airports along the East Coast. About 1,200 flights were scratched for Sunday and more than 5,500 were canceled for Monday as airlines scrambled to prepare for a potentially severe storm. An additional 640 flights were dropped for Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com, an airline information service. Many of the cancellations involved flights coming or going to New York area airports, such as Newark Liberty International, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy.