BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- With a nor'easter expected by Wednesday afternoon, residents of the areas hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy were urged to leave and, in some cases, ordered to. Some airlines also announced cancellations at New York area airports starting Wednesday afternoon.
People still in low-lying areas of Staten Island and the Rockaways are being urged to leave, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday. He also ordered parks and beaches closed on Wednesday.
In New Jersey, Brick Township ordered mandatory evacuations, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported. That area of Ocean County was where Sandy made landfall on Oct. 29.
The developing nor'easter is expected to track farther offshore than earlier thought, but that will mean even colder air along the coast.
Gusts up to 50 miles per hour and several inches of snow are possible in New York City and along the New Jersey coast starting Wednesday evening, the National Weather Service warned Tuesday.
"It's going to impact many areas that were devastated by Sandy," said National Weather Service forecaster Bruce Terry. "It will not be good."
Some coastal flooding is also a possibility in places like Breezy Point in the Rockaways.
Richard Mele, a 68-year-old retired New York City firefighter, was pumping out water from his flooded basement in Breezy Point to try and salvage any keepsakes ahead of the nor’easter.
"There’s no stopping this water from coming again tomorrow," he said, as a generator hummed in the background and while standing in front of a table bearing rare wooden, handmade fishing lures.
The ground is so saturated that Mele can’t get the water out permanently. "It’s going to rain three inches," he said. "It’s going right in my basement."
"When it rains it pours," he added. "We’re down and it’s just going to keep kicking us."
Michele Nagel, in her 40s, said she'd close the windows and that was about it.
“Everything we own is outside on the porch. It’s all awash, literally, it’s awash,” she laughed. “Nothing else you can do.”
The worst flooding is expected "at high tide, mainly along northern and northeast-facing beaches," weather.com reported, "but will be much lower than the magnitude of Sandy's coastal flooding."
Temperatures across the Northeast have been dipping into the low 30s, and nearly one million homes and businesses remained without power as of Tuesday morning.
The updated forecast now calls for snow.
"Cold air will wedge itself along the I-95 corridor to bring some accumulating snows from Delaware to Maine," the weather service's prediction center stated. "A few inches are possible" in cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia, it added.
From weather.com: Storm's city-by-city forecasts
Full coverage of Sandy's aftermath
In Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., Laura DiPasquale on Monday frantically searched dozens of trash bags that volunteers had stuffed full of her household belongings and brought to the curb, trying to make sure nothing she intended to keep had gotten tossed out with debris.
"I don't know where anything is; I can't even find my checkbook," she told The Associated Press. "I have no idea what's in any of these bags. And now another storm is coming and I feel enormous pressure. I don't know if I can do this again. It is so overwhelming."
Want to help the recovery? Here's how
Sandy roared ashore as a rare hybrid superstorm after killing 69 people in the Caribbean and then merging with a strong North Atlantic system.
It killed at least 113 in the United States and knocked out power to millions of people while swamping seaside towns and inundating New York City's streets and subway tunnels.
More than 217,000 people had registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and about $199 million in has been provided, Reuters reported.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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