Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hunkered down today in Albany preparing for Hurricane Irene, which is expected to hit New York City and Long Island by Sunday morning.

Cuomo cut his vacation short and cancelled a fundraiser to return to Albany to deal with the storm management and coordination prep. A closed-door cabinet meeting at noon in the Red Room was added to his public schedule this morning.

And the State Emergency Management Office increased its activation level to 5, the highest, according to a tweet from the governor’s office (Cuomo’s twitter page, which usually automatically retweets press releases, is being hand-operated during the storm response).

Cuomo plans to brief the public on the state’s emergency preparation at around 1 p.m.

Cuomo joined nearly every East Coast governor on Thursday in declaring a pre-emptive state of emergency in order to coordinate the storm response. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also declared an emergency as well.

The response is being coordinated several days after a minor earthquake centered in rural Virginia was felt strongly in New York and other states that aren’t accustomed to responding to tremors.

At the same time, concerns remain in New York over the potential cost of the storm. Nate Silver over at the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog pointed to the potentially “catastrophic” cost a major storm could have on New York’s finances.

And this USA Today story points to the concern that few homeowners, especially in high-value Long Island, have flood or hurricane insurance.

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