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.

Hurricane Sandy

As mammoth storm system Hurricane Sandy conspired to assault the most populous part of the United States, hundreds of thousands of people moved to higher ground and cities announced shutdowns that typically occur after several feet of snow.

The Washington region’s entire public transit system — Metro, Virginia Railway Express and the Maryland Transportation System — ceased operations. Schools, colleges and universities closed Monday, and some have already announced they’ll close Tuesday and Wednesday as well.

Cities north along the Eastern Seaboard took similar action. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) ordered the evacuation of Coney Island and Lower Manhattan, and authorities shut down the city’s schools and its subway system, effectively bringing the nation’s largest city to a near halt. More than 60 miles inland, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D) urged people to leave low-lying neighborhoods.

Even the New York Stock Exchange will close floor trading on Monday and move to an electronic-only system.

Thousands of flights in and out of eastern cities were canceled, and utility crews were summoned from distant states after it was predicted that 10 million people might lose electricity.

In the Washington area, utilities used robo-calls to warn residents to prepare to be without power for days or weeks. But there was hope that local power systems rebuilt after the intense windstorm known as the “derecho” in June might better stand up to Sandy.

“Pepco has committed all its resources to Hurricane Sandy,” said Thomas H. Graham, the company’s regional president. “Because of the magnitude of the storm, we will not be issuing estimated restoration times until the storm has passed and a preliminary damage assessment has been conducted. At that time, a global estimated restoration time will be released indicating when we expect to have 90 percent of customers restored.”

High winds — including hurricane-force gusts of 60 mph to 70 mph — should continue to hit the D.C. region through Tuesday evening, according to the National Weather Service. Sustained winds of 30 mph to 40 mph starting at 8 a.m. Monday are expected to increase to 45 mph around noon.

Hurricane Sandy and its co-conspirators — a jet stream barricade to the west, a strong nor’easter and a full moon that drives tides to abnormal heights — were not be be trifled with, forecasters warned. The full moon on Monday will add 2 to 3 inches to the storm surge in New York, said Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters.

“This storm is a killer storm that will likely take more lives as she makes landfall,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D). “This is a very large and unprecedented storm. It will be a couple of days before it will be even safe to get linemen out on the streets [and] up in the bucket trucks and reconnecting people to power.”