Hurricane Irene has clobbered the US east coast, killing at least eight people and paralysing air traffic before barrelling north on course for a rare direct hit on New York City. Packing winds of 140 kilometres per hour, Irene was weakened but was still a massive category one storm when it made landfall at 8:00am (local time) today at Cape Lookout , North Carolina, near a chain of barrier islands. Spiraling north, the storm was due overnight to start pounding metropolitan New York City and New Jersey, where well over a million people have been evacuated following dire warnings of storm surges and flooding. New York area airports – including John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia – were shut down last night, snarling air traffic after the cancellation of hundreds of flights earlier in the day. In North Carolina , sea water surged through beach communities, ripping out wooden piers and flooding vacation homes, as torrential rains and high winds left at least 800,000 people without power there and in neighbouring Virginia . At least eight deaths were reported in North Carolina , Virginia and Florida . Governors and mayors in several states have issued evacuation orders and repeatedly warned that Irene is still a full-fledged hurricane, and could unleash deadly storm surges, tornadoes and flooding. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered an unprecedented mass evacuation and the rare closure of the city's extensive subway system. US president Barack Obama, who cut short his summer vacation, visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's operations centre in Washington .