Sandy makes landfall in New Jersey

WASHINGTON - Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy, a former hurricane, had made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey state as of 8 pm EDT on Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday), said the US National Hurricane Center.

As of 8 pm EDT (0100 GMT Tuesday), the National Hurricane Center's latest data showed the storm's maxim sustained winds were holding at about 130 kph and the storm was moving northwest at 37 kph.

As of 2 pm EDT (1900 GMT), the impacted states in a stretching area from North Carolina up to New Hampshire reported a total of 316,500 power company customers without power, including 105,089 in New York and 87,649 in New Jersey.

Floodwaters surround a car parked on a street in Hoboken, New Jersey, Oct 29, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

But the US media later reported up to 500,000 to 750,000 customers had been knocked out of power on Monday afternoon before the center of the superstorm made its landfall on eastern coast.

"This is going to be a big and powerful storm and all across the Eastern Seaboard I think everybody is taking the appropriate preparations," said President Barack Obama earlier on Monday noon during a televised White House statement.

Obama also said a lot of power outages could be expected in the affected areas and urged people to be prepared for the fact that it would take a long time to clear up after the storm due to its nature of slow moving and wide swath.

Speaking on CNN's State of Union on Sunday, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said the state had learned lessons from the last storm which left many local residents without power for days, and already got about 2,000 additional people this time to help with the state's power supply.

From Sunday through Monday noon, Obama has declared a state of emergency for Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware where Hurricane Sandy could cause severe damage, making federal aid available for local response and rescue.

US federal offices would be closed to the public Tuesday, with only emergency employees required to work, the US Office of Personnel Management said.

Sandy, which has killed 69 people in the Caribbean, will meet up with cold fronts coming out of the northwest and a high pressure system from Greenland, fueling it with enough energy to be as powerful as, or even worse than the 1991 storm.

The combination superstorm could impact about 50 million people cutting in it path.

As the storm approaches, the East Coast is bracing for a repeat of the "perfect storm" of 1991, which came around Halloween that year and killed dozens of people.

Meteorologists have been using the term "Frankenstorm" to describe the havoc. Sandy, expected to make a landfall around Halloween, could affect hundreds of millions of people living along the East Coast.