East Grinds to Halt as Sandy Strengthens

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By MIKE ESTERL, TED MANN, LISA FLEISHER and JENNY STRASBURG

Getty Images

In this NASA satellite image, Hurricane Sandy churns off the U.S. East Coast as it moves north in the Atlantic Ocean Sunday.

Hurricane Sandy strengthened again late Monday morning, packing 90-mile-an-hour winds, and was expected to make landfall near the New Jersey-Delaware border Monday night, unleashing life-threatening storm surges along the Eastern Seaboard.

Hurricane Sandy looms over the northeast, triggering evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of residents, nearly 8,000 canceled airline flights, mass closure of schools and public transit systems and the closure of New York Stock Exchange. Photo: AP.

Government forecasters warned the large, slow-moving Category 1 hurricane will deliver gale-force winds, rain, flooding and even snow across a much broader swath stretching from North Carolina to New England—including coastal storm surges of as much as 11 feet in New York Harbor.

Hurricane Sandy has forced U.S. stock and options markets to go dark for Monday and possibly Tuesday; A meteorologist talks about the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy; WSJ Reporter Cameron McWhirter gives updates from the Virginia coast. Photo: NOAA

Sandy was located 205 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., and 260 miles south-southeast of New York City at 11 a.m. EDT, moving toward the north-northwest at 18 miles an hour, according to the National Weather Service. Hurricane-force winds extended as much as 175 miles from Sandy's center.
The storm is expected to turn toward the northwest shortly and then to the west-northwest Monday night, with its center making landfall "along or just south of the southern New Jersey'' coast, the weather service predicted.

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Tropical-storm conditions were already occurring Monday over parts of the mid-Atlantic states from North Carolina to Long Island in New York state, with hurricane-force winds possibly arriving in areas including New York City by evening. Forecasters warned winds on the upper floors of high-rise buildings will be significantly stronger than at ground level.