Forecasters say Sandy is no longer a hurricane but is still a dangerous system taking dead aim at New Jersey and Delaware.
The National Hurricane Center said Monday evening that Sandy is a
post-tropical storm and losing strength but still has sustained winds at
85 mph. The eye has almost made landfall.
The center says storm surge has reached heights of 12.4 feet at Kings Point, N.Y
Gaining speed and power through the day, the storm knocked out
electricity to more than 1.5 million people and figured to upend life
for tens of millions more. It clobbered the boarded-up big cities of the
Northeast corridor, from Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New
York and Boston, with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 mph.
Hurricane Sandy: Early damage reports
Flooding will be a huge threat, with many areas potentially seeing
rainfall amounts between 5 and 8 inches over a 48-hour period.
The full moon will make storm surges worse, as high tides along the
Eastern Seaboard will rise about 20 percent higher than normal.
Correspondent Chip Reid reports from Ocean City, Md., that sea levels
could rise 8 feet above normal - enough to flood much of the city.
In addition to rains and flooding, about 2 to 3 feet of snow is forecast for mountainous parts of West Virginia.
The tempest could endanger up to 50 million people for days. "This is
the worst-case scenario," said Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction
chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
President Barack Obama delivered a sober warning to millions in the path
of the storm on Monday, appealing to those who have not evacuated to do
so.
"Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When
they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Don't delay, don't
pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because
this is a powerful storm."
From Washington to Boston, big cities and small towns were buttoned up
against the onslaught of Sandy, with forecasters warning that the New
York area could get the worst of it -- an 11-foot wall of water.
"There's a lot of people that are going to be under the impacts of
this," Federal Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate said on
"CBS This Morning" Monday.
"You know, we've got blizzard warnings as far west as West Virginia,
Appalachian Mountains, but I think the biggest concern right now are the
people in the evacuation areas. They're going to face the most
immediate threats with the storm surge."
"The biggest challenge is going to be not knowing exactly where the
heaviest-hit areas are going to be," said Fugate, "and the fact the
storm's going to take several days to move through the area with heavy
rain and wind, so that's going to slow down recovery activities like
utility crews getting out and putting power back up."
Off North Carolina, a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS
Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the
Bounty" went down in the storm, and 14 crew members were rescued by
helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas. The Coast
Guard said it found one of the missing crew members but she is
unresponsive. The Coast Guard is still searching for the captain.
Hurricane Sandy slams Northeast
Forecasters said the hurricane could blow ashore Monday night along the
New Jersey coast, then cut across into Pennsylvania and travel up
through New York State on Wednesday. As the storm closed in, a crane
dangled precariously in the wind off a 65-story luxury building in New
York City, and the streets were cleared as a precaution.
Forecasters said the combination of Sandy with the storm from the west
and the cold air from the Arctic could bring close to a foot of rain in
places, a potentially lethal storm surge of 4 to 11 feet across much of
the region, and punishing winds that could cause widespread power
outages that last for days. The storm could also dump up to 2 feet of
snow in Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia.