In the wake of Hurricane Isabel's powerful winds and storms, thousands of East Coast residents continue to assess the full impact of the storm, which raced across the mid-Atlantic and up the Eastern seaboard in late September.

A week after the Category 2 storm made its initial landfall in North Carolina on Sept. 18, thousands remained without electricity while others attempted to repair waterlogged homes, their belongings all but destroyed.

"It was no Fran or Floyd, but for the folks who have trees in their living rooms, that's little comfort," North Carolina emergency management spokesman Mark Van Sciver told Reuters, referring to powerful hurricanes in the 1990s that caused similar damage.

In all, Isabel knocked out power to more than 3.5 million people, a condition that affected water supplies, snarled traffic and shut down schools and businesses for days in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Like other hurricanes and organized storm systems, Isabel was tracked using satellite and radar technology from the very beginning of its formation.

It took shape in early September as a tropical storm, some 1,400 miles east of the Leeward Islands heading toward the Caribbean.

When the storm gained in intensity and produced maximum sustained winds over 80 mph, weather officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially classified it as a hurricane.

Numerous branches of NOAA's weather watchers, including the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, track hurricanes and issue public advisories at different stages of the storm's development as it moves across the ocean toward land.

Isabel continued to gain strength, size and speed, reaching the maximum Category 5 classification on the Saffir-Simpson scale at its peak over the Atlantic, measuring sustained wind speeds upwards of 160 mph.

A hurricane's intensity and destructive power is largely judged by its wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure and other valuable data collected in the storm-chasing, or "hurricane hunter" flights of both NOAA and the Air Force Reserve.

The planes used for these flights hold scores of instruments and computers as well as teams of engineers and meteorologists who collect key data by flying in and around a storm. This information is then used to create computer models of a storm's potential path.

In the case of Hurricane Isabel, the National Hurricane Center issued a five-day forecast on Sept. 13, predicting the storm would hit the Cape Hatteras vicinity by Sept. 18.

While subsequent computer models of the storm's possible path showed the potential for a wide area of impact stretching as far north as New Jersey, the forecast was remarkably accurate.

"I am really concerned that people will expect us to do this well every time,'' National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield told the Virginian Pilot. "We've always been about telling the truth, and we will not do this well on every storm. That's not going to happen.''

Even with the best computer model, some storms can increase or decrease sharply in intensity with little warning.

"We've got a way to go with intensity forecasting," Mayfield told the newspaper.

Guided by extended hurricane center forecasts, officials ordered widespread evacuations along the North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware coasts ahead of Isabel's landfall.

Despite the evacuation warnings, some long-time residents and storm watchers in Isabel's path chose to remain in their homes, prompting police in Virginia Beach to suggest they write their names on their arms so they could be identified if injured or killed.

Aside from the heavy winds and rain expected, another key concern was that of the "wall" of water expected to rush through the region's waterways, a process known as storm surge which is brought about by the storm's high winds and low pressure.

"The simplest way to understand this [storm surge] is if you're 6 feet tall and you have 7 to 11 feet of storm surge, you have a problem," Mayfield told the NewsHour on Sept. 17, the eve of the storm's landfall.

"So no matter how well-built your house is, if you are on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, or in these areas, even the sand side, the sound, they could have very high values of storm surge in these areas, and even that greater Hampton Roads area there, we're really concerned about that if they do get the 4 to 8 feet of storm surge in that area," said Mayfield.

Storm surge proved a major factor in Isabel's impact even after the storm's initial winds and rain had passed, with significant flooding reported from the narrow Outer Bank islands to parts of the Virginia suburbs lining the Potomac River near the nation's capital.

As forecasters predicted, homes and businesses in the fragile coastal areas of North Carolina's Outer Banks and southern Virginia were particularly hard hit by the storm.

"All the towns along the coast have lost houses or hotels. … It will be months before we get back to normal, it will be next summer," said Renee Cahoon, a commissioner for Dare County in North Carolina, on Sept. 19.

Isabel has been blamed for over 30 deaths in six states and the nation's capital. Some 19 deaths in Virginia alone were blamed on the storm and included fatalities resulting from carbon monoxide poisoning from electricity generators improperly operated inside homes.

Three utility workers were electrocuted trying to restore power, one in North Carolina and two in Maryland.

Federal assistance, much of it coordinated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security, was quickly granted to North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., in the hurricane's wake.

As of Sept. 25, the Red Cross was operating 25 shelters in 10 states with 1,900 volunteers assisting hurricane victims.

Isabel was the ninth tropical storm or hurricane of the Atlantic season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

-- By Maureen Hoch, Online NewsHour