East Coast, Tropical Storm | featured news

Monster Storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast Monday, killing at least 16 people, hurling a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City and knocking out power to more than 7.5 million across the East Coast.

Hurricane Sandy blew the U.S. presidential race off course on Sunday even before it came ashore, forcing Republican Mitt Romney to shift his campaign inland and fueling fears that the massive storm bearing down on the East Coast could disrupt early voting.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers tips on how to prepare for Hurricane Sandy and other tropical storms. Sandy is expected to be especially disastrous when it merges with a winter storm system, bringing powerful winds, rain, snow and storm surge along the Eastern Seaboard.

Nearly 100,000 people were ordered to flee the rising Susquehanna River on Thursday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee dumped more rain across the Northeast, socking areas still recovering from Hurricane Irene and closing major highways at the morning rush. At Binghamton, N.Y., the wide river broke a flood record and flowed over retaining walls downtown. Interstate 88 was closed and emergency responders scrambled to evacuate holdouts who didn’t heed warnings to leave neighborhoods.

The big, ugly hunk of weather known as Lee weakened as it moved across Louisiana on Monday morning, and is no longer classified as a tropical storm -- though experts warn it could still cause flooding as it moves up the East Coast.

Tropical Storm Irene destroyed roads and marooned residents in more than a dozen central and southern Vermont towns in a matter of hours. The disaster took four days to unfold on Camels Hump Road, just east of Chittenden County.

Hurricane Irene knocked out power to nearly 1 million customers in Virginia; it was being restored in some areas today. Dominion Virginia Power said on its website early Sunday that more than 973,000 of its more than 2.4 million customers were without power Sunday morning.

Airlines are scrapping more than 9,000 flights this weekend from North Carolina to Boston.

Hurricane Bill brought rain and heavy winds to eastern Canada on Sunday after pounding the U.S. East Coast with heavy seas that killed two people.