<p>After leaving 44 people dead in the Caribbean, hurricane Sandy was downgraded to a tropical storm today as it inched toward the US East Coast, threatening to wreak havoc on a large slice of the country in the final week of an election campaign.<br /><br /></p>.<p>What has been dubbed "Frankenstorm" was expected to make landfall somewhere between Virginia and Massachusetts during the frenzied final week of campaigning in advance of the November 6 presidential, congressional and local vote.<br /><br />Concern is mounting that storm damage and power outages could have a major impact on voter turnout, polling station readiness, and last-minute campaigning by President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney.<br /><br />US Vice President Joe Biden cancelled an appearance today in Virginia Beach to allow officials to focus on storm preparations and Romney did the same.<br /><br />Forecasters predicted the storm could collide early next week with a seasonal "nor'easter" weather system that would super-charge it while dragging it west on to land and hitting states such as Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and even inland Ohio.<br /><br />Before then, Sandy is expected to lumber up the coast as a huge, slow-moving system while the eastern United States braces for huge tidal surges, power outages, inland flooding and even heavy snowfall on high ground far from the coast.<br /><br />As emergency response teams and frightened families stocked up on essential supplies, meteorologists said Sandy could affect as much as a third of the country, from the Carolinas up to New England and as far inland as Ohio.<br /><br />"It is going to be a challenging storm," Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate said, as officials warned it was too early to say when and where the storm would make its initial landfall.<br /><br />"We know somebody is going to get hit. We just cannot say who that somebody is going to be," said James Franklin, branch chief of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC), during a telephone press conference yesterday.<br /><br />Meteorologists have nicknamed the unusual confluence of weather patterns a "Frankenstorm," because it will hit just before Halloween on October 31 and is composed of parts from different sources, as was Frankenstein's Monster.<br /><br />The sprawling US Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia said it was sending an entire fleet of ships out to sea to get out of the way of the storm.<br /><br />Further north, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, said the city was ready for anything Sandy could throw at it, and cautioned against panic.</p>
<p>After leaving 44 people dead in the Caribbean, hurricane Sandy was downgraded to a tropical storm today as it inched toward the US East Coast, threatening to wreak havoc on a large slice of the country in the final week of an election campaign.<br /><br /></p>.<p>What has been dubbed "Frankenstorm" was expected to make landfall somewhere between Virginia and Massachusetts during the frenzied final week of campaigning in advance of the November 6 presidential, congressional and local vote.<br /><br />Concern is mounting that storm damage and power outages could have a major impact on voter turnout, polling station readiness, and last-minute campaigning by President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney.<br /><br />US Vice President Joe Biden cancelled an appearance today in Virginia Beach to allow officials to focus on storm preparations and Romney did the same.<br /><br />Forecasters predicted the storm could collide early next week with a seasonal "nor'easter" weather system that would super-charge it while dragging it west on to land and hitting states such as Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and even inland Ohio.<br /><br />Before then, Sandy is expected to lumber up the coast as a huge, slow-moving system while the eastern United States braces for huge tidal surges, power outages, inland flooding and even heavy snowfall on high ground far from the coast.<br /><br />As emergency response teams and frightened families stocked up on essential supplies, meteorologists said Sandy could affect as much as a third of the country, from the Carolinas up to New England and as far inland as Ohio.<br /><br />"It is going to be a challenging storm," Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate said, as officials warned it was too early to say when and where the storm would make its initial landfall.<br /><br />"We know somebody is going to get hit. We just cannot say who that somebody is going to be," said James Franklin, branch chief of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC), during a telephone press conference yesterday.<br /><br />Meteorologists have nicknamed the unusual confluence of weather patterns a "Frankenstorm," because it will hit just before Halloween on October 31 and is composed of parts from different sources, as was Frankenstein's Monster.<br /><br />The sprawling US Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia said it was sending an entire fleet of ships out to sea to get out of the way of the storm.<br /><br />Further north, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, said the city was ready for anything Sandy could throw at it, and cautioned against panic.</p>