I've seen a bunch of people headed to work, and security guards standing outside.
There's actually people at work, right now, too. Like, there's some rain, but it's not too much it's pretty warm. But in the middle of the city, where I am, you can't quite tell that there's a huge hurricane coming. And it's kind of - you can see, in pictures, it's kind of flooding up around the benches that are so nice to sit on, and look out at the Statue of Liberty. ZOE CHACE, BYLINE: Yeah, I mean downtown, Battery Park area, the water has come up over the sea wall. NPR's Zoe Chace is in Manhattan - which, if you look at a map, would seem to be the most protected the island of Manhattan there, in New York Harbor. We've got one other reporter on the line. Well, I guess the sand is available as long as the beach survives, anyway. And so they're doing sort of last-minute sandbagging, and deciding to stick out the storm. And I've seen car after car of people, pull up with garbage bags, shovel sand in, and bring them back to their homes - because they see that the water is going to hit the door, is going to hit their basement. And - and - I'm next to an interesting phenomenon here, which is there's still a part of the beach where you can get to the sand. SMITH: No, there's still a lot of people here. What about the part of the Rockaways you're in now - have people evacuated there? Now Robert Smith, earlier, in a different part of Queens in New York City, you said people - some people had not evacuated and were just beginning to get the idea, as the water rose, it might be a good idea. INSKEEP: And so you have huge, huge situation there. And if you imagine the map of New York City, that suggests that water gets pushed up into New York Harbor from below and also gets pushed in from the side, through Long Island Sound. INSKEEP: I'm thinking about the wind kind of hooking around, going north, and turning around to the west. And for comparison, you know, last year Irene did some flooding in Manhattan, and that was a storm surge of 4 and a half feet, just about. And there's no place for that water to go, except up. So what you have is water pushed into the bay below New York City you have it pushed into Long Island Sound, above New York City. This is - like you say - is an enormous storm there's a huge field of wind, as they say, and it's pushing water toward the coastline here. JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: I think it could get quite a bit worse. How much worse could it get, in New York? And let's put that question to NPR's Jon Hamilton, who's in our studios here. But a lot of people are seeing that if it's this bad in the morning, what's it going to look like tonight, when the storm is much closer and there's another high tide? And a lot of people are reconsidering their decision to stay in this neighborhood. And so people who - they were supposed to evacuate from the section of New York City, a lot of people stayed.
SMITH: Yeah, I mean, there is a good part of this, which is that the next high tide will be much, much worse. I wonder if this even technically counts as the storm surge, and yet it's obviously an ominous early sign. INSKEEP: That's pretty amazing because you are hundreds of miles away from the eye of the storm. There are a lot of impassable intersections, now, in Far Rockaway. And in some sections, the waves are coming up, hitting the boardwalk, sending up sprays of water, and actually flooding streets here, in New York City. And you know, I have to say, the Atlantic Ocean is a lot closer to New York City than it was 12 hours ago - because the storm surge has come in, there is - it's high tide.
ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE: I'm in Far Rockaway, which is a neighborhood of New York City, but it is right up against the Atlantic Ocean. And Robert, where are you exactly - what are you seeing? We're going to NPR's Robert Smith, who is in New York. Sandy is still hundreds of miles away from New York but already, the city is experiencing the effects - as we're going to learn. And next we're going to check up on New York City, where forecasters have spoken of a storm surge of 6 to 11 feet above normal waters. All this morning, we've been hearing from reporters up and down the East Coast, in the path of Hurricane Sandy.