Hurricane Sandy, the monster storm bearing down on the U.S. East Coast, strengthened on Monday after hundreds of thousands moved to higher ground, public transport shut down and the U.S. stock market suffered its first weather-related closure in 27 years.
About 50 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to Canada were in the path of the nearly 1,000-mile-wide (1,600-km-wide) storm, which forecasters said could be the largest to hit the mainland in U.S. history. It was expected to topple trees, damage buildings, cause power outages and trigger heavy flooding.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Monday the Category 1 storm had strengthened as it turned toward the coast and was moving at 15 mph (24 kph). It was expected to bring a "life-threatening storm surge", coastal hurricane winds and heavy snow in the Appalachian Mountains, the NHC said.
Nine U.S. states have declared states of emergency and President Barack Obama has warned the nation to brace itself.
"This is a serious and big storm," Obama said after a briefing at the federal government's storm response center in Washington. "We don't yet know where it's going to hit, where we're going to see the biggest impacts.
Sandy killed 66 people in the Caribbean before pounding U.S. coastal areas with rain and triggering snow falls at higher elevations.
Forecasting services indicated early Monday the storm would strike the New Jersey shore near Atlantic City on Monday night. While Sandy does not yet pack the punch of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, it could become more potent as it approaches the U.S. coast.
Winds increased to a maximum of 85 mph (140 kph), the NHC said in its 5 a.m. (1100 GMT) report, up from 75 mph (120 km) three hours earlier. It said tropical Storm force winds reached as far as 485 (780 km) from the center.
New York and other cities and towns closed their transit systems and schools and ordered mass evacuations from low-lying areas ahead of a storm surge that could reach as high as 11 feet (3.4 meters).
All U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday and possibly Tuesday, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange said late on Sunday, reversing an earlier plan that would have kept electronic trading going on Monday.
Sandy forced President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney to cancel some campaign stops and fuelled concern it could disrupt early voting - encouraged by the candidates this year more than ever - before the November 6 election.
The United Nations, Broadway theatres, New Jersey casinos, schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and myriad corporate events were also being shut down.
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