New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says backup power has been lost at New York University hospital and the city is working to move people out.
The mayor delivered a news conference Monday night and said rain was tapering off in the city and the storm surge was expected to recede by midnight.
He urged residents not to call 911 unless it was an emergency and implored them to stay off the roads so emergency vehicles could get around.
He says a few parts of lower Manhattan still have power. He said there have been a large number of fires reported from downed power lines.
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A superstorm that sent water rushing onto city streets has left a large swath of the lower part of Manhattan without power.
Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said Monday evening that the power was out for most of Manhattan south of 26th Street.
On the east side, the power outage extended from 29th Street south. There were some scattered areas that still had electricity.
Olert said the damage stemmed from flooding and the probable loss of a transmission feeder.
The power outage was separate from a planned power cut that Con Ed did in certain lower Manhattan neighborhoods to protect underwater systems from flood damage.
Olert said there were 250,000 customers without power in Manhattan. A customer represents a single meter, so the number of people actually affected is likely higher.
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Forecasters in Miami say the center of former Hurricane Sandy has made landfall along the New Jersey coast near Atlantic City.
The National Hurricane Center says the storm packing torrential rains and wind roared ashore about 8 p.m. EDT Monday. The vast storm has already knocked out electricity to more than 1.5 million people and figured to upend life for tens of millions more.
Sandy had sustained winds of 85 mph. Forecasters say it's no longer a hurricane, but was still a vast and dangerous hybrid storm
Sandy is combining with a wintry storm from the west and cold air from the Arctic. The superstorm could menace some 50 million people in the nation's most heavily populated corridor, from big East Coast cities to the Great Lakes.
Just before roaring ashore, the National Hurricane Center announced that it considered Sandy no longer a hurricane but had turned into a wintry hybrid.
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President Barack Obama says he's confident that state and federal governments have done all they can to prepare for the superstorm barreling up the East Coast.
He says the slow-moving storm will affect millions of people, and he is urging Americans to heed warnings. "The most important message I have for the public right now is please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Do not delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given because this is a serious storm and it could potentially have fatal consequences if people haven't acted quickly."
Obama was speaking from the White House briefing room. He said the key is to make sure the public is following instructions to take precautions.
A week from Election Day, he says he's not worried about the impact of the storm on his re-election chances. And he says that the No. 1 priority is to make sure lives are saved.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg says New York City schools will remain closed on Tuesday as Sandy approaches.
The city had closed its 1.1 million-student district -- the nation's largest -- on Monday because of the superstorm threatening the city with a storm surge of up to 11 feet.
Bloomberg says schools will remain closed because there's "no chance" that mass transit will be restored by Tuesday.
The city shut down its subways, buses and commuter trains ahead of the superstorm. The worst of the storm is expected to hit the city Monday evening. Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier Monday said that two key tunnels to Manhattan that are prone to flooding would close Monday afternoon.
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Major U.S. stock and bond markets will be closed because of Sandy on Tuesday.
It will be the first time since 1888 that the New York Stock Exchange will have been closed for two consecutive days because of bad weather. The cause then was a blizzard that left drifts as high as 40 feet in the streets of New York City.
Much of the East Coast was at a standstill Monday as the storm approached. Mass transit and schools were closed across the region ahead of the storm hitting land, which was expected to happen later Monday.
Areas around the Financial District were part of a mandatory evacuation zone. The storm surge is already pushing water over seawalls in the southern tip of Manhattan.
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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is curtailing his campaign schedule as Sandy bears down on the Eastern seaboard, canceling planned appearances Monday night and all day Tuesday.
Campaign officials say vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan will also scrap campaign rallies during the same time frame.
The decision was announced a short while after President Obama canceled a planned rally in Florida to fly back to Washington, where aides said he would oversee the government's response to the threat posed by the storm.
Romney intends to go ahead with speeches today in Ohio and Iowa before he begins observing his self-imposed storm-related moratorium on campaigning.
President Obama is cancelling more campaign events to monitor Sandy back in Washington.
The latest political event to get scrapped as the storm heads to the East Coast is the president's trip to Green Bay, Wis., Tuesday.
Four critical election states are affected by the storm -- North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire.
The former Massachusetts governor and Obama are locked in a close race, eight days before Election Day.
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Sandy has grounded thousands of flights in the U.S. northeast and upended travel plans across the globe, stranding passengers from Hong Kong to Europe. The massive storm threatens to bring a near halt to air travel for at least two days in a key region for both domestic and international flights.
Major carriers such as American Airlines, United and Delta canceled all flights into and out of three area airports in New York, the nation's busiest airspace. According to the flight-tracking service FlightAware, nearly 10,000 flights have been canceled for today and tomorrow, almost all related to the storm.
Delays rippled across the U.S., affecting travelers in cities such as San Francisco to Chicago. Disruptions spread to Europe and Asia, where airlines canceled or delayed flights to New York and Washington from cities that are major travel hubs including London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
About one-quarter of all U.S. flights travel in or out of New York airports each day. So cancellations here can dramatically impact travel in other cities.
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The Coast Guard says it has found one of the missing crew members of a tall ship that went down off the North Carolina coast, but she is unresponsive.
Lt. Mike Patterson said crews are taking 42-year-old Claudene Christian to the hospital. The Coast Guard is still searching for the captain of the HMS Bounty.
The ship began taking on water and the crew had to abandon it about 5 a.m. Monday in the rough waters churned up by Sandy. The 14 other crew members were rescued.
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Gas prices are likely to spike in the days after Sandy rips through the Northeast, but they should drop back down before too long.
The largest Atlantic storm ever recorded is making its way through the heart of the East Coast's oil refinery region.
Sandy's fierce winds and unrelenting rain will be pounding major refineries in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many have already shut down temporarily.
The real impact would come if damage from flying debris or power outages takes some refineries off-line for several days.
One supply chain expert says an extended delay in refinery production could push the national average from today's $3.54 a gallon to $4 a gallon.
Hurricane Sandy from space
