Records, Hurricane Sandy | featured news

The 2012 hurricane season has come to an end and it's another one for the record books, above and beyond the destruction of Sandy. There were 19 named storms in what meteorologists consider an above-average year that tied as being the third most-active season since 1851. The season runs from June 1st to November 30th, although tropical storms can and do sometimes develop outside those dates.

A small earthquake hit northern New Jersey early Monday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The magnitude 2.0 temblor struck at 1:19 a.m. and was centered in Ringwood, N.J., a community that’s still reeling from downed trees and power outages caused by Superstorm Sandy.

The effort to reopen schools shut by Hurricane Sandy presented officials with a tangled puzzle and New York City’s 1.1 million students with a drastically altered landscape... Cots lined the hallways, and toilets were limited or clogged, so some evacuees went to the bathroom on the floor. Volunteers, gagging at air made more fetid by unwashed bodies, took to wearing masks. “We gave them wipes,” a volunteer said, “but there’s only so much you can do with wipes.”

Commuters into New York City endured long waits and crowded trains, giving the recovering commuter system a stress test a week after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the New Jersey and New York coast lines....

Tens of thousands of people in New York state whose homes were damaged by storm Sandy could soon need housing as cold weather arrives, politicians warn.

With only sporadic access to text messaging and the Web, many in Hurricane Sandy's no-power zone quickly cobbled together systems for passing along information and arranging when and where to meet.

A mother learns that her newborn is part of a hospital evacuation. Facebook posts from a member of the HMS Bounty turn ominous. A man worries about the wind and rain, but another force of nature hits home.