Forecasters say the center of Superstorm Sandy has roared ashore on the New Jersey coast, packing high winds and a life-threatening storm surge. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the center of the enormous storm made landfall at 8pm near Atlantic City, after it was reclassified from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone. Sandy had sustained winds of 85 mph, and forecasters say it's no longer a hurricane, but is still a vast and dangerous hybrid storm.
Hurricane Sandy is messily morphing into a more diffuse storm that is bigger, weaker, and sloppier. Sandy already had been among the largest-sized hurricanes with tropical force winds that once extended across 1,000 miles over open ocean. High wind warnings extend from the Canadian border to central Florida and from Chicago to Maine, said one expert, but those winds will be less intense than those around the eye of a hurricane. Its massive girth will extend as far as Chicago, and water may pile up on the south shore of Lake Michigan. (More Hurricane Sandy stories.)