There is a bit of wind and some flooding coming up to the U.S. eastern shore. While the storm covers a huge area its wind speeds seem to be rather normal.
I have often visited and for some time lived in some of the east cost states. When I did several infrastructure issues let me shake my trained engineer head. The unburied local electricity lines were obvious prone to fall down and fail. Because of leaky supply lines tap water in some areas was chlorinated and unusable for consumption. Those plywood houses that were being build everywhere would hardly sustain natures regular wrath. In Manhattan I saw no flood protection at all. I wondered: "There is an ocean right out there. Don't they ever get storms?"
I was born in northern Germany and now live in Hamburg. We regularly have quite gusty storms and some flooding. Flood protection is always a high priority local political issue all along the North Sea coast. As the height of flooding is predicted to increase due to the changing climate dikes are constantly heightened to withstand the predicted higher waves. With few exceptions the local electricity lines are all buried. The tap water is drinkable and the houses are build with stones.
This seems to be a cultural issue. U.S. citizens are probably willing to live with more risk than old Europeans. But why then is there always this craze about terrorism? A negligible threat with hundreds of billions wasted on to prevent its occurrence.
Now here is an idea. Why doesn't someone smart declare Sandy and her relatives a foreign terrorist organization? Isn't she from somewhere in Central America? Hasn't she already breached several red lines and her international obligations?
Declaring bad weather a terrorist entity and the now running media craze of the imminent threat would allow politicians to move hundreds of billions of dollars towards fighting it and to work on mitigating its consequences.