Storm could affect millions on East Coast

>>> howling and just over my shoulder the broiling chesapeake bay showing the power of hurricane sandy that's tracking towards us far off the coast. but it's landfall that has scientists using megastorm, a surprising link up between two massive storms, impacting up to 60 million people . you have to see what it looks like from space to really appreciate the size of the storm. it's simply a swirling right mass up and down across. people are heeding the urgent warnings especially in coastal regions. tonight people are under mandatory evacuation orders. new york city city and philadelphia are also preparing to shut down mass transit . our team is spread all along the mid- atlantic coast with the latest on the storm and its impact. we want to begin with the weather channel 's jim cantore on the tip of lower manhattan .

>> reporter: where i'm standing in about 24 hours , there's a very good chance i'll be standing here in waist- high water , if i were still standing here and i won't be. here it is on satellite as you mentioned, just a huge cloud canopy, currently about 523 miles to the south of new york city , there's a very low pressure to this so to the wind field is 900 miles wide this. s-path that we have seen for the past several days, brings the center within 00 miles of the the city. four to eight inches possible, the jersey shore , t south shore of long island . then six to 11 feet, this is what prompted the evacuation orders from the mayor of new york city . new york harbor on the north shore of long island dealing with six to 11 feet. the national weather in new york says this will be the highest storm surge ever in new york city , that's what they are predicting at the national weather service so far. look at the rainfall, we're up from last night. locally a foot in new jersey. the biggest difference this year is stream flows across pennsylvania and new york are much lower so we may save a few from flooding but it's inevitable that we will sigh flash flooding in many, many places. and crippling snowfall in parts of virginia. all of these elements coming together for massive power outages, some 60 mill brion people affected, we are iing 10 million to lose power from this megastorm.

>> some remarkable numbers there, jim,