As ravaged areas try to pick up the pieces from the wrath of Hurricane Irene, a new threat may be churning in the Atlantic Ocean. Tropical Storm Katia was born at about 5am eastern time on Tuesday, upgraded from a tropical depression that formed yesterday. Like Irene, Katia formed from the tropical waves off Africa’s Cape Verde Islands, and could gain enough steam in the warm water to collect hurricane strength. But will Katia pack the same punch as her sister? 'It's far too early to tell,' said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 'We’re in the peak of the hurricane season. This is when you're going to see most of the storms and they’re not all going to take the same track.' Richard Pasch, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Centre, told Reuters: 'It's still well out to sea. A lot of things can happen. Despite the fact that Katia’s path is unknown even to the experts, Mr Pasch recommended that the East Coast and the Caribbean 'keep an eye' on the storm. As Hurricane Irene battered the East Coast this weekend, it appeared Tropical Storm Jose was next in line for the Atlantic hurricane season, but that storm sputtered almost as fast as it formed. '[Jose] died a quick death,' Mr Feltgen said. Meanwhile, storm-ravaged areas from North Carolina to Vermont are fighting to survive after Hurricane Irene levelled structures, knocked out power and spawned rivers of epic flooding. The small town of Prattsville, New York in the Catskill Mountains has nearly been wiped off the map after Irene tore through the area, taking out bridges and destroying homes. On Monday night, police helicopters rescued 21 people left stranded by the floods, including a pregnant woman and four young children, CNN reported. The group took shelter in a home after intense rain and treacherous flooding crippled all bridges leading into and out of the town. The dramatic rescue came after some 87 people were plucked from the area on Sunday. Another 40 people remain holed up at the Huntersfield Christian Training Centre. George Williams, youth leader at the centre, told CNN: 'There are some here that have nothing to go back to, so they don't know how long it's going to be.' And Prattsville's not alone, as thousands of residents as far north as Vermont were left homeless by Irene's unprecedented flooding. Marion Bender's home in Greenfield, Massachusetts, was completely flooded by the huge torrents that have swept across the region - and she and her husband have no flood insurance. 'We have got to start all over,' she said. 'We'll be all right.' The flooding has brought the death toll from hurricane Irene to 46 with whole towns swept away and the state of Vermont particularly badly affected. National Guard and firefighters rescued hundreds from record flooding in New Jersey on Tuesday as Vermont planned to airlift food and water to inland towns cut off by Hurricane Irene. The storm may have spared New York City, but it caused the worst flooding in decades in inland areas of New York State, New Jersey and Vermont. Search and rescue teams have plucked nearly 600 people from homes in recent days with the most intense efforts on Tuesday when the Passaic River measured 13 feet above flood stage, the highest level since 1903, Paterson police Sgt. Alex Popov said. Firefighters rescued some by boat and the National Guard saved others by truck, taking them to a Red Cross shelter. ‘Some are standing there in the doorway. Some are coming out of their windows,’ Popov said. ‘It's raging,’ he said of the Passaic, which runs through the centre of town. Authorities expected the river to begin receding later on Tuesday. Swollen rivers were still cresting on Tuesday and flood plains remained under water in northeastern states that were already soaked by an unusually wet summer. Utilities restored electricity to roughly half the 6.7 million customers who had power knocked out, and New York City mass transit and air travel crept back to normal. Clear skies in the northeast aided rescue efforts, but hundreds of thousands of homes were damaged, some swept away in the torrent. In New York City's New Jersey suburbs, flood victims anxiously waited for waters to recede while just a few miles away the city buzzed anew, slowed only temporarily by an unprecedented preemptive shutdown of its mass transit system and an evacuation order on Saturday. The governor of Vermont has spoken of the devastation the small rural state suffered at the hands of Hurricane Irene and warned that further flooding and loss of life are likely. Governor Peter Shumlin said: 'It's just devastating. Whole communities under water, businesses, homes, obviously roads and bridges, rail transportation infrastructure. We've lost farmers' crops. We're tough folks up here but Irene ... really hit us hard. 'It's hard for us to know, frankly, how many are stranded because it's hard for us to get into the communities we need to get to. It really packed a punch. It is probably the toughest flooding that we've seen in the state of Vermont in our history. 'We really need more resources but the President has been extraordinarily helpful'. Highlighting the transportation problems, the Vermont National Guard had to travel through neighbouring Massachusetts to get rescue crews to the small, cut-off town of Wilmington, the governor said. The death toll for the hurricane has now risen to 46 as towns and cities start the recovery process, with some still grappling with more flooding. Images of the flooding showed normally tranquil streams pouring through city streets and thrashing against buildings and bridges, including some of the state's iconic covered bridges. Four to six of the covered bridges were destroyed in the flooding, officials said. From North Carolina to Maine, communities cleaned up and took stock of the uneven and hard-to-predict costs of a storm that spared the nation's biggest city a nightmare scenario, only to deliver a historic wallop to towns well inland. Many people lost all their worldly possessions in the hurricane and some even their whole homes. All that is left of a beach front cottage in Nags Head, North Carolina, owned by the Stinson family are the steps that once led up to it. The Stinson family's devastation has been shown in several photographs of the disaster, a father comforting his wife and daughter on the steps leading to where their house once stood, staring at the ocean beyond. His daughter, Erin Stinson said: 'We were pretending, just for a moment, that the cottage was still behind us and we were just sitting there watching the sunset.' The cottage, which was built in 1903, was bought by Billy Stinson's family in 1963. Since then, it was where the retired art teacher spent his vacations, wooed his wife Sandra, and gathered with family, according to OurState.com in an article written a year ago that recounts the cottage and its rich history. Rivers and creeks turned into raging torrents tumbling with tree limbs and parts of buildings in northern New England and upstate New York as the storm's winds diminished, but the torrential rains refused to let up. Late last night, the storm continued to batter Vermont with heavy rains forcing hundreds of evacuations. 'This is not over,' President Barack Obama said from the White House yesterday. 'Many Americans are still at serious risk of power outages and flooding, which could get worse in the coming days as rivers swell past their banks.' While the full extent of the damage was not known, early estimates put it up to $45billion, including lost business and physical damage. Power companies said they were trying to get critical services running first. But many are just starting to understand the full extent of damage to the grid. About 2.8million customers remained without power on Tuesday afternoon. Source : Daily Mail