Natural Disaster, Frankenstorm | featured news

A day after it launched a punishing strike on the East Coast of the United States, Superstorm Sandy remained a threat Tuesday. The storm made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey on Monday night, but its mammoth size affected a much wider area -- and continued to do so as it shuffled northward toward Canada, leaving at least 30 U.S. deaths in its wake.

Superstorm Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm....

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.

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.

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.