Hurricane Sandy gains strenght, may bring 'life threatening' storm surge towards East Coast

This is getting really serious, we hope you are safe where you are!

A superstorm threatening 50 million people in the most heavily populated corridor in the nation gained strength Monday, forecasters said.
The National Hurricane Center said early Monday that Hurricane Sandy increased its top sustained winds from 75 mph to 85 mph, with higher gusts, and was picking up speed.

The Category 1 hurricane is accelerating, moving north-northwest at 20 mph after moving northeast Sunday night. At 8:00 a.m. ET the storm was centered about 310 miles south-southeast of New York City. Hurricane-force winds extend up to 175 miles from the storm's center, with tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 485 miles.

Gale force winds were reported over coastal North Carolina, southeastern Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and coastal New Jersey.

Sandy is about 385 miles south-southeast of New York City and the center of the storm is expected to be near the mid-Atlantic coast on Monday night. It was expected to hook inland during the day, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic.

CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard reports that wind gusts of 38 mph and 41 mph have already been reported in New York City and Boston, respectively.

Sandy is likely going to strengthen even more as it approaches the East Coast, Bernard reports, with hurricane-force winds reaching land by Monday afternoon. Flooding will be a huge threat, with many areas potentially seeing rainfall amounts between 5 and 8 inches over a 48-hour period.

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."

Forecasters said the hurricane could blow ashore Monday night or early Tuesday along the New Jersey coast, then cut across into Pennsylvania and travel up through New York State on Wednesday.

Meanwhile Airlines has canceled more than 7,200 flights and Amtrak began suspending train service across the Northeast. New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore moved to shut down their subways, buses and trains and said schools would be closed on Monday. Boston also called off school. And all non-essential government offices closed in the nation's capital.


The New York Stock Exchange said it will be shut down Monday, including electronic trading. Nasdaq is shutting the Nasdaq Stock Market and other U.S. exchanges and markets it owns, although its exchanges outside the U.S. will operate as scheduled.

As rain from the leading edges of the monster hurricane began to fall over the Northeast, hundreds of thousands of people from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to evacuate low-lying coastal areas, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, 50,000 in Delaware and 30,000 in Atlantic City, N.J., where the city's 12 casinos were forced to shut down for only the fourth time ever.


"We were told to get the heck out. I was going to stay, but it's better to be safe than sorry," said Hugh Phillips, who was one of the first in line when a Red Cross shelter in Lewes, Del., opened at noon.

"I think this one's going to do us in," said Mark Palazzolo, who boarded up his bait-and-tackle shop in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., with the same wood he used in past storms, crossing out the names of Hurricanes Isaac and Irene and spray-painting "Sandy" next to them. "I got a call from a friend of mine from Florida last night who said, 'Mark, get out! If it's not the storm, it'll be the aftermath. People are going to be fighting in the streets over gasoline and food.'"

[Read more from CBS]