By Steve Gelsi and Val Brickates Kennedy, MarketWatch
Street quiet as city awaits worst of storm later on Monday, Tuesday
http://www.marketwatch.com/
Reuters
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — New York braced for a surge of up to 11 feet of sea water as the approach of Hurricane Sandy forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands from low-lying areas while the region’s transportation infrastructure ground to a halt.
With the city’s massive subway system closed down and the New York Stock Exchange shuttered both on Monday and Tuesday, much of the city was quiet as the storm slowly picked up in power.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the FDR Drive, parts of Lower Manhattan and the Rockaways have already reported flooding. He urged people to leave the low-lying areas of the city that were evacuated over the weekend.
“Conditions are deteriorating rapidly and the window is closing,” Bloomberg said. “It’s just going to get worse and worse.”
The city’s schools will be closed on Tuesday, Bloomberg said.
“The real flooding is going to come tonight,” he said. “You have a full moon, so that exacerbates the problem.”
Flagging the tidal surge as a major “area of concern,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the closure of the Holland Tunnel and the Hugh Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel at 2 p.m. Eastern.
At a press conference, Cuomo said he was deploying 1,000 additional National Guard troops for a total of 2,000.
The governor said tidal levels are already comparable to heights reached during Hurricane Irene in 2011, but high tide is still several hours away. The Brooklyn Bridge will see high tide at 9:17 p.m. Eastern, according to forecasts.
Hurricane-force winds are expected from Virginia to Massachusetts, including New York City, according to the latest update from the National Weather Service.
Conditions will deteriorate further
Conditions will worsen Monday night, with winds of up to 55 miles per hour and damaging wind gust of up to 90 miles per hour.
“Life-threatening” coastal flooding will remain a concern until Tuesday afternoon.
Areas most vulnerable to flooding are western Long Island Sound, Long Island’s south shore and back bays and Peconic Bay.
Mayor Bloomberg ordered the mandatory evacuation that affected about 375,000 people in low-lying areas from the beaches of Queens to the glassy high-rises of Battery Park City.
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