welcomto this extended coverage of 9news as we track hurricane sandy, the monster storm making landfall in southern new jersey just a bit less than an hour ago. it's packing those monster winds, 90 miles an hour. there's a surge of water as high as 10 feet it. tore into the dunes and washed across the boardwalks and

forecasters are warning the whole new york city region could now face the worst of this hurricane with the potential to flood parts of manhattan, flood subway tunnels and even cripple communication systems. closer to home one storm- related death was reported from an accident in montgomery county. also the federal government will be closed tomorrow as will most school systems in our area including d.c., alexandria and fairfax, prince george's, charles, frederick and montgomery county schools there. we see bruce johnson getting ready to talk to us from rehoboth. you can see the whole list of school closings at www.wusa9.com. >> as you might imagine, all the flights at the local airports have been canceled until further notice, as has the vre, mark rail, amtrak train -- marc rail, amtrak trains and that's for tomorrow. we also know metro will not have service in the morning. they will reassess and decide later on when the subway and buses will start to run again,

but as of now you should be at home. >> that's right. they're not going to make that decision to get them running again until they see what the weather brings. they are at the mercy of mother nature as they said. >> we all are, quite frankly, looking at some of the strongest winds beginning to move into the metro area. let's start with the wind gusts. so far we've had wind gusts 55 at national, down last hour to 51. don't let that fool you. winds will go up before they go down. wind gusts ocean city 47, boston 49, laguardia 53 miles per hour. we talked about this all weekend and even some of last week that the breadth of the storm is so large. that's what makes this storm so dangerous and damage in the fact that it's large and a very strong storm. winds 51 mile-per-hour gusts in martinsburg, 53 in winchester, 51 downtown, 51 down towards pax river and across the bay a 41 mile-per-hour wind gust in

easton. the wind field 10:00 tonight we could well have hurricane force winds over the district, anne arundel county, southern maryland, prince george's county, just about everybody till you get back to fairfax and maybe up into parts of frederick and loudoun county. the orange is no picnic. the orange are winding from 40 to 73 -- winds from 40 to 73, so they're still damaging as well. even by 3:00 in the morning we'll have damage winds from new york well south of us almost down to fredericksburg with a little bulls identify hurricane force winds pushing -- bull's eye of hurricane force winds pushing north of town into southern sections of pennsylvania. finally we get into tuesday evening, we still have place sieve field of tropical storm force winds 39 miles per hour or greater. you can get damage with those, too. we'll put this back into motion. finally by wednesday morning it looks like by halloween morning we will see a relaxing of the winds and should be out of the woods in terms of tropical

storm force winds by early wednesday morning, slipper by noon wednesday. temps keep going down -- certainly by noon wednesday. temps keep going down, 46 in manassas and also in gaithersburg. so stay away from windows is a good rule of thumb when you have winds this strong. anything can become a projectile. hopefully you've secured the loose objects and brought stuff inside. sleep on the lower level if possible. if not, away from windows in an interior room. just got an e-mail. she says got it. i'll sleep in the lower level of the southwest corner. no. lower level is good. you want to sleep in the northeast corner because the dangerous winds overnight will be west, southwest, that means coming from the west, southwest blowing towards the northeast. we're getting in the critical stage between now and 2 p.m. tomorrow. radar still a tremendous amount of moisture and heavy rain pushing across the entire mid- atlantic. heavy rain from hagerstown to

baltimore down 95 through d.c. down to fredericksburg and out to the west in through loudoun county all the way to winchester. if look at the heaviest rain moving through. this is really heavy rain now over wheaton go out georgia avenue and just to the east side of 270. this is pretty big time rain, also pretty big time rain in between d.c. and baltimore up 29, also up 95 around laurel and columbia near savage. we're talk heavy rain. this is rainfall rates about 3/4-inch per hour and it's adding insult to injury. essentially of county is under a flood warning now. we're not going to show you those because every county is lit up like a christmas tree. so sandy will be historic, pressure records quite possibly, critical now through tuesday at least till noon. damaging wind 45 to 75 miles per hour. we've already seen streets and river flooding with 4 to 12 inches of rain possible with the storm. so let's talk about the impacts. these kinds of winds will take

shingles off roofs, siding off houses, river and street flooding already occurring and it will also down trees and limbs. so we have a ways to go. highest winds are still on the way. next three days 9 weather alert tomorrow, we'll be a severe weather alert, no doubt about that. we're still looking digit russ weather tomorrow and winds -- at dangerous weather tomorrow and winds 40 to 50, still windy wednesday, thursday maybe a show. we'll go weather alert yellow, 56 wednesday for halloween and 57 on thursday. >> you probably talked about this already, but we've gotten questions on our wusa9 facebook page about this historic pressure. why does the pressure matter? what does that mean as far as the storm when you say record pressures? >> it's statistics like baseball, how many home runs did he hit, r.b.i.s, a statistic. so the lower the pressure, the stronger is storm, the stronger the storm, the higher the wind,

the hire the wind the more severe the -- higher the wind is the more severe the storm is. >> hurricane sandy is the halloween boogey man that came two days early. >> i think sandy has been juicing quite frankly. sarah shipman joins us from frederick near frederick high school. we saw you before at a lowe's where things were selling out like crazy. now we see you outside. >> reporter: yes. certainly things have picked up a little bit here. even when we got here outside frederick high school, it was more of rain shower. now this is a very steady almost diagonal rain right outside frederick high school here. we're standing near carroll creek. this is the creek that runs through downtown frederick. there's a lot of risk of flooding with this and we are seeing water come up very quickly here. in fact, when we first got here, we were able to walk out to these weeds here. now you can see there's quite a bit l water moving rapidly

through here. -- bit of water moving rapidly through here. where i'm standing the water has come up through the grass almost over my boots here, so several inches in the last hour or so. we have had a little bit of wind, some gusts come through, but mostly just this very steady pounding rain. in fact, when we first got here, there were still some people outside walking around walking dogs, things like that. in fact, one couple told me at that point the creek here looked like it was about twice its normal size. now it's continued to move from its banks and if it continues up over this and onto the roadways, you've got some concerns there as well as the houses and schools surrounding us. i don't know how far you can see in the dark here, but there are baseball fields behind us that look quite flooded. there's really maybe 30 feet or so now that the creek has just taken over moving that direction. so we eventually talked to several people who thought frederick was the safe spot. we talked to people from

rehoboth beach, other parts of delmarva who chose this as a spot to evacuate to, but, in fact, they haven't avoided the wind or the rain. so far power is on. we'll continue to monitor things in frederick. >> we'll check back in. thank you. now we head over to debra alverone in a huntington neighborhood where evacuations were ordered tonight. >> reporter: we're standing on fenwick drive in the huntington section of alexandria, i'm standing here and you can see cars going by. you can see the metro over behind us. that's really the only place that's lit up. this is a mandatory evacuation area. this street specifically, also one other street, arlington terrace. so we got here maybe about a half hour ago. we got over here, started walking around talking to people, came up to this -- whoa, it's getting bad out here

-- this house right here i met a vice nice couple with their two young children getting ready to go, but they had no idea there was a mandatory evacuation until we told them. now about maybe 15 minutes or so ago we saw police officers and firefighters down here with flashlights going door to door. we'll show you a little of that video later. coming back over here to fenwick, you can look at the road, sure, it's wet, but they say this always floods, not sometimes, but they say it always floods. in fact, this very nice couple we talked to took us in and showed us their basement and exactly where it flooded till last time. there were very heavy rains. certainly we thaw and a lot of people trying to get out of -- saw that and a lot of people trying to get out of here. i know it's very dark in this area. you can see some houses that are dark, but you can also see houses that have the lights on. again mandatory evacuation in the huntington section of

alexandria. you got all the way at the end cambridge run. that floods over into here. that's why they want to get people out of here, but again not everybody has left. we spoke to a couple people. we'll play you a little bit of that later on, one invest excited young boy who will be -- very excited young boy who will love to see himself on the air. evacuations they say happens all the time on fenwick road and arlington terrace at enof this road here. we'll be stay -- end of this road here. we'll be staying here for a bit and see what's going on and play you a bit of that video and also show you the evacuation efforts underway here a little later on. >> let me ask you we all know about cameron run and the problems it's caused before. any signs so far that creek has left its banks and is posing any trouble? >> reporter: i'm so sorry. it's really hard to hear you out here. one more time? >> i've just asked if you had

any signs so far that cameron run had overflowed its banks? maybe not. >> reporter: we don't have any signs of that yet. i think what they're doing now is taking the precautions getting everyone out now. some people say they're going to wait a little while. we just spoke to a gentleman who was out here and said i'm going to wait, not smart thing to do. you can see rain is coming down. we're getting pounded here. look at all this rain in the road and it's right in the road. we're going to drive down this and get video for you as well, but this is not a good situation to be in. you definitely don't want to end up in a situation where you can't get out if you need to. so now is the time to go. >> it might be time for you to get out of the street there. it's getting a little trafficky with people maybe making their way out of that neighborhood. thank you. >> you could see once the headlights hit the rain, it's coming down in sheets. we're back in a moment with more of our coverage of hurricane sandy.

our facebook page is a great place to get a lot more information and we are posting your pictures and comments right now on sandy. go to facebook/wusa9. >> it's a fantastic resource. we even heard from some people in downtown d.c. on our facebook page and were able to relay their questions to the mayor. so please keep your comments coming. let's go to russ ptacek for an

update on power outages. >> we've had some significant changes. you can look at the twitter posts i made just a bit ago. the first post was 36 minutes ago with 176,000 without power. this is what i posted just five minutes ago. we are now at 212,000. that's bge with over 85,000, dominion over 83,000, pepco over 17,000, novak over 15,000smeco over 6,000. the biggest change we're seeing now is dominion. let's look at their map. we can move right in on this fairfax county arlington alexandria fairfax city area. you see those big red dots? they indicate 2,500 or more in that zip code and the more is infinite. these are probably big locations with significant

outages. bge reporting 85,539 without power right now. we can look at their map. we're denitely seeing lot of outages around annapolis, bowie, laurel, columbia area and they go all the way up to aberdeen. we want to look at the latest from pepco. interestingly pepco, one of our largest providers now, has one of our lowest number of customers without power. they're right now at over 17,000. we'll look at one of these high outage areas. let's pull that up right there, figure out what information we can get at area code 20772. in that area alone 815 customers without power. again pepco serving that area in the blue border, just over 17,000 customers without power. this is novak currently reporting about 15,000 customers without power. we'll push right into one of these areas around chantilly

and see what information can he with get on -- we can get on that and in this particular incident reported at 2:46. they don't even have an estimate when that one will be continued. then at smeco we're looking at 6,237, big numbers in st. mary's and calvert county. these numbers are going up now that we've made it above 200,000 people with the carriers that we're watching without power. >> a total of 212,000 outages. as we expected they are climbing as we head into the height of the high winds. >> but the interesting thing is pepco which in the past has had so many outages is not doing so badly tonight. so far they have fewer than 20,000 folks in the dark. topper, is there something about the territory involved, where the storm is that's taking it easier on pepco? >> no. let's not jinx their luck, okay?

some of us might be a pepco customer. we are looking at the height of the storm in of wind now through early afternoon. check this out. it's snowing out there from our friend lori. they've had 3 inches since this was taken. south of that down into tucker county around davis and timberline they've had already 9 inches of snow. so that's a flip side. really the storm for success not about snow. it's about wind, primarily about wind. yes, there's rain, but wind is the big thing. 52 mile-per-hour wind gusts downtown, still in the low 50s in martinsburg and winchester and 41 mile-per-hour wind gusts in annapolis and easton. notice the winds. these are the arrow essentially north westward. as the storm begins to traverse into northern bay and northeastern, maryland, the winds shift to the west and

then west southwest overnight. so some of the strongest winds will actually be perhaps a west or west, southwest wind overnight. the wind field, well, not good. 10:00 tonight we may have hurricane force winds from essentially i-95 eastward across the delmarva and the orange circle here is nothing to sneeze at. these are winds over 58 miles per hour up to hurricane force winds and, of course, the yellow is tropical storm force winds and they just extend out pretty much up and down the eastern seaboard. into the 4:00 hour tuesday morning, hurricane force winds in montgomery county and howard county, northern prince george's county and northward up to the border of maryland and p.a. and still damaging winds almost to new york and down to fredericksburg. that's the problem with this storm. at least the deer rach oafs one shot and out of here. -- the derecho was one shot and out of here. this will be a period of heavy rains and wind which is a

recipe for disaster. by tomorrow evening the red and oranges are pretty much gone. the yellows are still there, so tropical storm force winds through tomorrow evening, through tomorrow night and finally by halloween morning they should relax. we should see breezy conditions, but the tropical storm force winds should be out of here no later than noon wednesday. so stay away from windows. sleep on the lower level. i want to emphasize this overnight because that's when the highest winds will occur and the heaviest rains have fallen, so that is a big one. sleep on the lower level interior room. highest winds 45 to 75 miles per hour. i think many of us will have gusts over 75 miles per hour and critical now through 2:00 tuesday. even when we see the wind goes down to tropical storm force, they'll still be damaging winds by the time we get into tuesday afternoon. massive amounts of moisture continue to move ashore, rainfall rates anywhere from 1/2-inch to 1 inch per hour.

this is some very heavy rain around laurel, columbia to laurel. heavy rain just moved through bowie and approaching rockville. this will rotate across the river into loudoun county and fairfax county and eventually into prince william county as well. sandy will be historic no doubt, pressure records, i think they'll fall, critical between now and tomorrow at noon. damaging winds 45 to 75 miles per hour and street and river flooding a certainty at this hour. so it will take shingles off your roof, siding off your houses, river and street flooding and down trees and limbs. we will keep you posted and we're online, too at wusa9.com. >> i don't think anybody has seen a doppler ever that looked like that. >> it's the sheer size that gets you. >> covers our whole area. >> we'll be back in a moment with more on sandy.

i'm here with simon landaeu. it is sent by my cousin much the ground is so soaked, so saturated, that you have to be careful with the trees. go ahead and play the video. they captured the tree falling. thankfully it went the other way an not in their house. you see it catches on fire. it's caught on a power line. just evidence for you to be out there, to stay careful and pay attention to the downed trees and power lines. don't go anywhere near them. we have some great thank you for my cousin. we have great pictures, we want to show you. you could see them on our home page. and let's check out the first one. this is the other tree down. this is up the road from the station. it's on cathedral avenue right off connecticut, where samantha fried -- friedman. the atlanta fa city boardwalk. we've been hearing all day about the flooding.

it's gone. the boards are gone. all that's left, it's unbelievable. just be careful. one more for you. this is more flooding in north beach maryland. don't drive your cars through there. before i let you guys go. you and -- had a, a discussion the difference between a hurricane and what's is now a hurricane. >> the ap announced sandy is no longer a hurricane. it's a super storm. we're getting a lot of feedback. what does it mean? does it work for us. i just went back, interviewed with a little i-phone video that we're about to upload. log to our facebook page. facebook.com back slash wusa9. >> closing emergency phone numbers and everything you need to know in our facebook page on wusa9. keephe