That means it is 943 millibars. Sounds technical . It means it is a really deep storm, even for a hurricane, and it is transitioning into a nonhurricane, and yet maintaining its strength. Thats one important factor. The other important factor is take a look at the bends that this storm is making. You can see that really well on the satellite photograph. That bend from east to west is very important, because it is bringing the water with it. In fact, the only storm that ever did that before, at least in my lifetime, is the perfect storm back in 1991, just one day different from today. It was october 30th in 91. The differences between that storm and this one well, that storm, as you could see, basically skirted cape cod, never really making a full landfall, but but, there are important similarities as well. The similarity is, number one, extra tropical storm, was a hurricane, turned around. And number two, both those storms moving from east to west bringing both the winds because of the counterclockwise circulation and the motion of the storm into the shorelines and thus bringing extra water. So the storm surge with this very powerful. Wouldnt you know it, that storm surge ends up in the new york city vicinity. Were talking about Long Island Sound. Were talking about the connecticut coastline. The new jersey shorelines. One of the possible places economically. Already were seeing some big surf but this is nothing compared to what were going to see in just a few hours, because the tide is coming up at the same time as the storm is moving in. It is terrible timing. High tide is around 8 00 to 9 00 tonight. 8 00 to 9 00 p. M. Is exactly when this storm is going to make landfall on the new jersey shorelines. Somewhere near or slightly north of Atlantic City. This is going to bear very close watching all afternoon into early this evening. Again, the storm surge is the first problem. Theres going to be massive Power Outages and in addition, of course, then there will be some flooding rainfall. Well talk about all those factors as the day wears on. Well keep you posted on that. Well have more in just a few minutes from now. Thank you so very much, todd. We appreciate it. Breaking news now. Bob pisani has it. It concerns the exchanges. Bob . Of course, its decision time about whether or not were going to be open tomorrow. There is a Conference Call going on right now between all of the major exchanges, representatives of the brokerage industry, as well as the s. E. C. To make the final decision. All indications are, sue, that there will be no opening tomorrow of any of the exchanges as there has been today. The key that everyone is focusing on is wednesday. It is the end of the month. A lot of individuals, a lot of firms, need to report numbers for the end of the month. The focus is on opening wednesday. Even if there is only a skeletal crew on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and at other exchanges and other trading desks. The question of course is whether or not the system will be able to handle it and whether or not well have enough people to be able to come in. Right now, sue, the idea is even if it is just a shortened day just for a few hours the idea is to get the market open on wednesday. Sue . Back to you. Thank you, bob. Continue to monitor that call. Take a look at this. This is what this massive storm looks like from outer space. You can see just how huge this system is thats called sandy. If you were wondering why parts of Lower Manhattan in new york city were evacuated, you need look no further than scott cohns live shot. Hes in battery park city. If you dont know, it is about a fiveminute walk from the New York Stock Exchange. The ocean spilled over the wall there earlier this morning as the tide came in. Scott, it seems like the rains pick up a little bit but how are things now . Reporter sue, tyler, take a look at new york harbor. It is getting progressively worse and we are now at low tide so theres a big difference from what we showed you earlier. But the skies are darkening. The rain is coming in. As you heard todd gross talk about, this is where storm surge will be coming in right as high tide happens this evening. And when we were here reporting earlier this morning, this was much of this area was under water. Lets take a look at what it was like at high tide. Again, thats just the morning tide with the full moon on top of it. Not a lot of storm surge. At that point sandy was still several hundred miles from new york city. Thats going to change when we get to the evening high tide. That is what everybodys worried about, what the exchanges are talking about and so on. As you then begin to realize why it is that this is becoming such an issue, even though the weather might not suggest it now. You look at whats going on in the financial district. Sandbags are on the New York Stock Exchange. Theres been water coming in over the flood wall by the New York Mercantile Exchange which is right on the hudson river. It is also difficult now getting in and out of manhattan. Two of the tunnels the brooklyn battery tunnel that connects manhattan and brooklyn closing at the top of the hour. The holland tunnel connecting Lower Manhattan with new jersey also closing. They are looking very closely at the bridges, if the winds get to be what theyre saying theyll start closing bridges. So it really doesnt make a whole lot of sense to have people going in and out of the city, having people trying to get to work to the extent that they are going to and thats what the exchanges and everyone else are looking at right now. Scott cohn reporting from manhattan. Rpts por ports an refineries up and down the east coast are shut down in advance of sandy and the cost is adding up. Mary thompson is in the port of baltimore. Most of maryland set really to get hammered. Mary . Reporter thats true, tyler. Most of the state is under a flood warning. The governors saying they are expecting floods to be equivalent or worse than hurricane gloria back in 1985. Of course that prompted the port of baltimore to shut down earlier. Similar actions being taken by the port of new york and new jersey as well as the port of delaware bay. Those two ports are important to the east coast refineries. The reason being, most of the crude that those refineries use to make gasoline and other distillates is brought in through those two ports. Now speaking of the refineries, a number of them have either shut down or operating at reduced capacity. If phillips 66 lynn d 66 refin jersey shut down earlier today. Three others including the largest on the east coast Philadelphia Energy solutions, they are running at a reduced capacity. All of this giving a lift to the price of gasoline on the futures market. As you might expect, investors and traders are anticipating tighter supplies but keep in mind, that is offset by a decrease in demand as investors stay home or i should say, drivers stay home in an area that accounts for about 2 Million Barrels per day of gasoline demand. Now, theres another part of the equation. That being the pipelines that helped to bring in the extra gasoline thats needed along the east coast. Colonial pipeline, one of the largest, says it is right now looking at contingency plans to shut down in the event its customers, the refiners and some of the terminal operators, either reach capacity or shut down themselves. And at that point they say they might consider shutting down the pipeline. But again, it is a contingency plan right now. From a very rainy maryland, of course were expecting the higher winds later today, but the rain which has been falling since about well, early this morning, continues for the next 24 hours. Back to you. Mary, stay safe. Thank you so very much. Lets head a little bit further up the coast to the jersey shore. Its the summer playground and casino lovers hotspot. It is now locked down and it is getting hit very hard. Kayla tausche has been there all morning. Kayla, over to you. Reporter sue, no question that new jersey is expected to bear the brunt of this storm when it makes landfall later this evening. Thats going to coincide with a pretty nasty high tide for the entire shore from cape may here to a little bit farther north in Atlantic City, around 8 30 you could see water all the way up to where im standing right here. Governor chris christie, you heard him a little bit earlier. He said in some parts of Atlantic City flooding is up to five feet. And also we heard from Public Safety director william glass who said the entire city of Atlantic City is under water. The damage already worse than 1962 on the flooding side there. Take a look at this picture from nbc 10s ted greenberg. Parts of Atlantic City boardwalk broken and floating down the street. Thats from earlier this morning. We talked to all the casino operators from there on the boardwalk but still have no comment from them and their operations and how they will continue following this storm. Long beach island is a popular vacation spot for wall street. Nearly completely flooded right now. The ocean and the bay close to meeting in Long Beach Island. Lets also think about when this high tide is expected to hit later today. You can see the wind is picking up and the rain is picking up. We expect this to take place throughout the afternoon, guys. We will have more from cape may as we have it but you can see the storm is definitely ramping up. Sue and tyler, back to you. Thank you very much, kayla. Of course, new York City Schools closed today, closed again tomorrow. A big question for investors like you, what about the markets . The cme will not be open do tomorrow. When we come back well talk more about whether we will see trading at the New York Stock Exchange and nasdaq. Bob pisani had the very latest just a few moments ago. Conference calls taking place. We got more of cnbcs coverage of this unprecedented late season east coast hurricane after this quick break. Be right back. [ male announcer ] this is karen and jeremiah. They dont know it yet, but theyre gonna fall in love, get married, have a couple of kids, [ children laughing ] move to the country, and live a long, happy life together where they almost never fight about money. [ dog barks ] because right after they get married, theyll find some retirement people who are paid on salary, not commission. Theyll get straightforward guidance and be able to focus on other things, like each other, which isnt rocket science. Its just common sense. From td ameritrade. Absolutely stunning pictures of sandy as we take a look at this radar. As you can see, it is going to pack a wallop, not only in the high winds, but massive amounts of rain. It is a slow moving storm so it is going to be over much of the eastern seaboard for some time. As we have seen, Hurricane Sandy is already hitting the refineries, consumers and wall street. Here to put some more numbers to the headlines. Hes going to be with us the next couple of days. Thank you so much for joining our team here at cnbc. Or perhaps were joining your team at the weather channel. People are at home, theyre not out shopping certainly. Whats the impact do you think on the Retail Sector . Its going to be a significant impact. Citigroup just put out an analysis of november, calendar november or physical november. They estimate that it could take about 3 or 4 off of specialty apparel retailers and specialty retailers in general because of the storm. Ironically though, october will probably benefit from the storm because of the comparison to sn snowtober last year. We may see a bit after surprise on thursday. But november is going to take a big hit. What about the Power Outages that we are already starting to see. Governor christie saying in southern new jersey, 35,000 people so far without power. Obviously that is going to increase dramatically as the storm moves through. It looks like Power Outages could really be the big story and have the biggest Economic Impact overall. Johns hopkins put out a Research Study yesterday that estimated about 10 Million People could lose power. That compares to about 7 million that lost power during irene. And it could take a week to get everybody back up and running because they wont be able to start putting things back together again until probably wednesday and it will be another five to seven days after that. Big, big hit to the economy. Paul, thank you so much. I know youre going to be with us for the next few days as we continue to work through Hurricane Sandy. Thank you, paul. All right. Tyler, over to you. Thank you, sue. Hurricane sandy of course bearing down, point pleasant, new jersey. Some utilities bracing for the worse. We just talk a little bit about that. Warning customers that they could be out of power for a week, ten days, maybe more. What kind of damage are we talking about here and will some utilities perform better than others. Greg gordon is senior managing director at isi group. Mr. Gordon, welcome, good to see you. Can any utility that will be affected by this storm be described as a potential winner . No. Look, these companies are regulated. They are they make fixed rates of return on the infrastructure and their job is to provide service. When you have a Natural Disaster of this proportion, their job is to restore that service as quickly as possible. Ive been on the phone and talking to ceos of a bunch of Companies Since yesterday morning. The good news is i really do believe that these companies are better prepared for this storm than theyve ever been prepared for any other storm, especially after the problems that several of them had last year with hurricanes. The companies from all over the country are contributing crews and equipment. Tom fanning whos been a guest speaker here on your show, whos the ceo of southern company, has sent over 1,000 crews. Crews are being flown in from as far as washington and San Francisco that have been prestaged nap is they are already here, prestaged with equipment so that as soon as this wind and water recede they can get to work restoring power. Last year i believe connecticut power and light was one of the ones that got a lot of criticism for a slow, tardy response. Is any one of the publicly traded utilities on the eastern seaboard more vulnerable, more likely to suffer potentially grave damage to its market value . You know, that is really a function of whether or not when all of the storm damage reseeds, theyre perceived as having done the best they could in restoring service or whether theyre deemed to have been in some way not sort of completely competent in the Recovery Efforts. And so what well see as this recedes is ewell watch very closely Companies Like potomac, first energy, con ed, northeast utilities, for signs that the regulators are happy or unhappy with their performance. What kind of writedowns or costs are some of these Companies Likely to face . We talking in the hundreds of millions of dollars . We talking in the billions potentially . What . The restoration costs are going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but as long as those costs are deemed to be necessary for the restoration effort, they will ultimately be recovered from customers. It is when you start to get into a situation where youre deemed to have been sort of not competent in your Recovery Efforts that youre at risk of having to write those off. That could be a headwind for the shares. But look, i think the story here is, these companies are really doing their best to be ready to restore service and id be i actually dont think that were going to see much of that. If this was a traditional hurricane we have to go to some breaking news. Im sorry for interrupting you, greg. Thank you for being with us. Its official. Bottom line is, the New York Stock Exchange will be closed tomorrow, along with all the other exchanges, indeed all of the other bond, option and derivatives exchanges. Also tomorrow theyre going to make every effort to open on wednesday, conditions permitting, and tyler, the important thing here is conditions permitting. Its the end of the month. Theyve made it very clear all the exchanges that they want to open at least for some period. Its possible there could be an abbreviated session on wednesday as well, but surely theyre going to try to open with at least a skeletal staff at the New York Stock Exchange and along with all of the other exchanges as well. Tyler . All right, bob. So this could possibly then open on wednesday. Might be a delayed opening, an abbreviated session. Will it include the traditional floor trading or just electronics or do we noe know . As of now, the hope is they will be able to open with at least a skeletal staff on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Have everything open. But then again, if thats not possible, they well he could just go to electronic trading as well. The idea is to open one way or another, with every means possible, on wednesday. Bob, you gave a very good explainer of this earlier. Because a lot of people are focused on the electronic trading platforms that all the exchanges have. And were asking questions about, well, why cant they just trade electronically. Can you basically refresh the conversation that you and i and others had earlier this morning for those at home who may not understand why it is important for the exchange to physically have people on the floor. Reporter electronic trade something not tng w humans. Electronic trading is trading using computers, but there are still humans behind that. So here in new york, for example, there are thou