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• In New York and New Jersey, rain and 60 mph wind gusts Wednesday evening and overnight carried the potential to swamp homes again, topple trees wrenched loose by Sandy, and erase some of the hard-won progress made in restoring power to millions of customers.
• "I am waiting for the locusts and pestilence next," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. "We may take a setback in the next 24 hours."
• Ahead of the storm, public works crews in New Jersey built up dunes to protect the stripped and battered coast, and new evacuations were ordered in a number of communities already emptied by Sandy. New shelters opened.
• Not everybody was hunkering down.
• Katie Wilford was leaving her Brick Township home near Barnegat Bay as the nor'easter approached. She bundled her sons Nick, 14, and Matthew, 10, into the minivan in search of an open motel.
• "It's a little overwhelming," she said. "I can't believe we're doing this again. We're going on Day 10 with no power. That's a long time. I just want the sun to come out and things to be normal again."
• In New York City, police went to low-lying neighborhoods with loudspeakers, urging residents to leave. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn't issue mandatory evacuations, and many people stayed behind, some because they feared looting, others because they figured whatever happens couldn't be any worse than what they have gone through already.
• "I'm staying," said 61-year-old Staten Islander Iliay Bardash. "Nothing can compare to what happened Still, authorities urged caution. The city manager in Long Beach, N.Y., urged the roughly 21,000 people who ignored previous mandatory evacuation orders in the badly damaged barrier-island city to get out.
• All construction in New York City was halted -- a precaution that needed no explanation after a crane collapsed last week in Sandy's high winds and dangled menacingly over the streets of Manhattan. Parks were closed because of the danger of falling trees. Drivers were advised to stay off the road after 5 p.m. and part of the busy Long Island Expressway was shut down in both directions because of icing.
• About 6:30 p.m., the Long Island Rail Road suspended service in and out of Penn Station.
• Airlines canceled at least 1,300 U.S. flights in and out of the New York metropolitan area, causing a new round of disruptions that rippled across the country.
• By the afternoon, the storm was bringing rain and wet snow to New York, New Jersey and the Philadelphia area. Huge waves pounded the beaches in New Jersey. Firefighters in New York City responded to reports of tree branches falling into buildings, blocking streets and knocking down electrical wires.

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