Weather, Natural Disaster | featured news

There has never been anything like it in modern American history, a natural disaster so massive and so close to election day, and for all their minutely-plotted moves there was nothing for the candidates and their strategists to do but improvise and hope for the best.

Hurricane Sandy is churning off the East Coast and is expected to join up with two other weather systems to create a huge and problematic storm affecting 50 million people. Here's a snapshot of what is happening or expected, state by state....

Hundreds of thousands of people were told to flee low-lying areas, New York and Washington shut down their subways, federal offices and local schools closed, and presidential candidates curtailed their campaigning as Hurricane Sandy roared ever closer to the Eastern Seaboard on Sunday, promising epic storm surges, howling winds and drenching rain across much of the Mid-Atlantic region and Northeast.

Airlines hastily canceled flights in the Northeast Sunday as Hurricane Sandy moved up the coast. 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.

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.

An official says the first waves are usually not the biggest, and it could be as long as seven hours before the warning is canceled. The tsunami was generated by a 7.7 quake off Canada.

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake has hit Canada's Pacific coast province of British Columbia on Saturday night, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

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.

U.S. forecasters say Miriam has strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane well off Mexico's Baja California peninsula. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Miriam is packing top sustained winds of 120 mph, making it what's classified as a major hurricane.