A huge storm pounded the north-eastern United States and brought record high tides in some coastal areas, while 60 million people hunkered down for the night Monday amid powerful winds and heavy rains, DPA reported.
The storm made landfall around 8 pm (0000 Tuesday GMT) near Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Minutes earlier, the National Hurricane Center downgraded Hurricane Sandy to a post-tropical cyclone, after the system's top winds dipped from more than 150 kilometres per hour to about 135 kph.
The outlying effects of the storm already caused damage Monday along a vast swath of the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Broadcaster CNN reported 3 million households in at least 11 states had lost power.
The worst of the storm looked to be hitting north of the eye in New Jersey and New York City, where winds were reported surging about 120 kph.
The storm surge at Manhattan's Battery Park was 30 centimetres above the previous record at high tide late Monday. There were reports of subways and tunnels flooding in the city.
A collapsed construction crane dangled beside an unfinished skyscraper, and the facade fell from an older tenement building.
There were reports of at least one death in New York in a house crushed by a fallen tree. Authorities in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington suspected that a traffic fatality Monday was attributable to the weather.