Residents of the U.S. Northeast are bracing for a new storm to batter the region today after it was devastated by superstorm Sandy last week.
The former hurricane that walloped New York and New Jersey eight days ago continued to create misery for the thousands who lost their homes and 900,000 households and businesses that remained without power.
Today's smaller but powerful storm, a nor'easter, is expected to bring 100-kilometre-an-hour winds and a mix of rain and snow today and Thursday.
Temperatures could dip toward freezing or below.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered all city parks and beaches closed at noon today for at least 24 hours.
"We just don't need to send our first responders into the ocean to save someone who is being foolish," Bloomberg said.
He emphasized that today's evacuations, designed to coincide with high tides when the storm surge will be highest, will not be as widespread as the mandatory evacuations of large parts of the city ordered before Sandy hit the city last week.
The new evacuation zone includes the south shore of Staten Island - home to nearly half of the 41 people killed in New York City by Sandy - and the hard-hit Rockaways section of Queens.
On the devastated Jersey Shore, a summer tourist haven where Sandy's storm surge swallowed whole neighbourhoods and pushed entire homes across the street, the town of Brick issued a mandatory evacuation order for waterfront neighbourhoods.
Sandy killed 69 people in the Caribbean before it moved north, combined with a strong North Atlantic system, and roared ashore on the New Jersey coast on Oct. 29 as a rare hybrid superstorm.
It killed at least 112 in the United States and two in Canada, and knocked out power to millions of people while swamping seaside towns and inundating New York City's streets and subway tunnels.
