Superstorm Sandy surged inland late Monday, hitting the New Jersey shore and New York Harbor with incredible force, killing at least eight people, plunging almost 5 million others into darkness and crippling transportation with historic flooding across a huge swath of the East Coast.
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New in this version
- Eight people killed
- 4.8 million without power across U.S.
- NYU Medical Center closed; critical patients being diverted
The mammoth storm began breaking up as it hit the New Jersey shore Monday evening with maximum sustained winds of 90mph, later dropping to 75 mph, but Sandy continued to punch a destructive path across 11 states and the District of Columbia even after having been downgraded from hurricane status.
"You have to stay wherever you are," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said late Monday, telling New Yorkers they threatened their own and other people's lives by going out in the storm.
"DO NOT DRIVE. Call 9-1-1 for emergencies only," the city's Office of Emergency Preparedness said in blast alerts to mobile devices across the city.
New York University Medical Center was moving about 215 patients to other hospitals because its backup generator was out, the hospital said. Critical adult and pediatric patients and infants in neonatal intensive care and obstetrics were being taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital.
From hurricane to nor'easter
The National Hurricane Center re-designated Sandy as a "post-tropical cyclone," saying it was rapidly losing its tropical characteristics as it merged into an enormous nor'easter.
Still, the National Weather Service predicted "historic and life-threatening coastal flooding" through Tuesday morning, with the greatest danger coming at high tide.
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NBC News special report
Ron Allen, Robert Bazell, Tom Capra, Rehema Ellis, Ziad Jaber, Miranda Leitsinger, Miguel Llanos, Tom Lea, Sarah Rosefeldt and Tom Winter of NBC News; The Weather Channel; NBC News Channel; and NBC 4 of New York, NBC 10 of Philadelphia, NBC 4 of Washington, NBC Connecticut of Hartford, WHDH of Boston, WJAR of Providence, R.I., and WSAZ of Huntington, W.Va., contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.
The powerful storm flooded sections of Atlantic City and other areas of the New Jersey shore, while New York Harbor surged into lower Manhattan and areas of Brooklyn, submerging entire streets and parks.
At least eight people were killed Monday:
- Two men were killed in separate incidents in New York ? one in Queens and one on Long Island ? when trees fell on them, authorities told NBC New York, and a woman was electrocuted in Queens when she stepped into water that concealed a live wire.
- Two people died when a tree fell on their car in northern New Jersey, authorities told NBC Philadelphia.
- One person was killed when a car hydroplaned over high water in Montgomery County, Md., in the suburbs of Washington, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told MSNBC TV.
- One person died after a tree fell in Mansfield, Conn., NBC Connecticut reported.
- A woman died in an accident on snow-covered roads in Tucker County in northeastern West Virginia, NBC station WSAZ of Huntington reported.
- One person was killed when the crew abandoned a replica of the HMS Bounty 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C. Fourteen others were rescued, but the captain was missing. The ship later sank in 18-foot seas.
Sandy made landfall at Atlantic City about 6:45 p.m. ET, NBC New York reported. By 9 p.m. ET, its center was about 15 miles northwest of Atlantic City.
Storm water flooded Lower Manhattan on Monday night, pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens Midtown tunnels, bursting into a subway station and even cascading into the construction site at Ground Zero. At 9:24 p.m., the water level at Battery Park, on the southern tip of Manhattan, had reached 13.88 feet, surpassing the previous record of 11.2 feet in 1821.
More than 4.8 million customers had already lost power across the eastern half of the country. About half were in New York and New Jersey.
About a quarter-million were in Lower Manhattan, Bob McGee, a spokesman for Con Ed, told NBC News on Monday night. The utility pre-emptively began shutting off power to part of Lower Manhattan to protect its equipment and to allow for faster restoration after the storm had passed.
PhotoBlog: US trading floors silent as Cyclone Sandy passes
"Pretty much everyone" is out of power south of 39th Street to the Battery, Bob McGee, a spokesman for ConEd, told NBC News.
Schools, offices, roads and transit systems shut down across an area of 50 million people.
Weather Channel coverage of Sandy
The fact that the storm made landfall "does not mean this is the end of the event," said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center. It means, Knabb said, that "for many folks, it is just beginning":
- Despite a mandatory evacuation order for 375,000 people living in low-lying areas Monday, many New Yorkers stayed put, hunkering down in in their homes.
- Business experts feared long-term, potentially catastrophic economic damage because of Sandy's tidal surge carries, which produces more damage than wind because water is heavier. U.S. stock exchanges didn't trade Monday and will be closed Tuesday. In Washington, federal offices closed Monday and Tuesday, and federal courts in affected areas announced that they would be shuttered.
- In New York, a crane atop a high-rise building under construction toppled over and was dangling over the side. Nearby offices and streets were evacuated.
As Sandy's winds howled and rain poured over Atlantic City ? where they washed away part of the fabled boardwalk ? Gov. Chris Christie sharply criticized Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford, whom he blamed for having "advised people to stay in shelters in the city."
"Despite my admonition to evacuate, he gave them comfort, for some reason, to stay," Christie said, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported.
Later on, Sandy is expected to collide with arctic air and a storm moving in from the west to create windy, wet, even snowy conditions far inland.
BreakingNews.com's coverage of Sandy
Winter storm warnings were issued through Wednesday morning for southwest Virginia and the East Tennessee mountains, where snow had already started falling. More than 30 inches of snow was expected in the higher elevations of West Virginia, and a foot was forecast in the North Carolina mountains.
Share your images of Hurricane Sandy
Power failures, meanwhile, were expected to affect millions of residents and businesses and could continue through the presidential election, NBC meteorologist Bill Karins said.
"After the storm hits, expect the cleanup and power outage restoration to continue right up through Election Day," he said.
Before it made its way north, Sandy was blamed for the deaths of 65 people in the Caribbean.
More Hurricane Sandy coverage:
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
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