If Chris Christie tells you you’re trick-and-treating in mid-November, then you’re trick-or-treating in mid-November, punk.

If conditions are not safe on Wednesday for Trick or Treating, I will sign an Executive Order rescheduling #Halloween.

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 30, 2012

Via JWF, watch below as he makes sure that Atlantic City’s answer to Ray Nagin won’t drag down Christie’s administration with him.

You’re welcome to use this as your open thread for Sandy. As I write this, the storm surge is overrunning lower Manhattan and looks to be just as bad as predicted. These three tweets followed in succession in my timeline some 20 minutes ago:

BREAKING: Con Edison says large sections of Manhattan plunged into darkness by storm.

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 30, 2012

BREAKING: Floodwaters have rushed through Lower Manhattan, inundating subway and automotive tunnels. Subway system could be out for a week.

— WSJ New York (@WSJNY) October 30, 2012

RT @adamlisberg Entire Hudson River is flowing into Ground Zero, Carey Tunnel and subways. It sounds like Niagara Falls. Too dark for pic.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) October 30, 2012

This amateur video makes Avenue C look like a river, and we’re really only in the first hours of this. The storm made landfall around an hour ago so the surge should continue into the night. The MTA tweeted that it hasn’t made any decisions about closing the subway system and that they won’t be able to assess the damage until tomorrow, but, er, they’re also tweeting that up to four feet of seawater is entering the tunnels on the east side. LaGuardia’s runways could be next, and no one knows how long the blackouts in lower Manhattan — and maybe beyond — will last. I can’t begin to imagine how much total economic damage there’ll be. But hey: Christmas for Keynesians, no?

Update: Rumors flying now on Twitter that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is under three feet of water. I’m assuming that’s a lie and you should too, but the way things are going, it’s not a completely outlandish one. This, however, appears to be for real.

Update: If you’ve never seen what it looks like when a giant transformer blows, here you go.

Update: The reports about the Stock Exchange do in fact appear to be false. Even so, in the 30 years that I’ve lived here, this looks like it’ll be the single worst day for the city apart from 9/11.

Update: We have a hospital on fire in Coney Island, and the local FDNY can’t reach it because … it’s surrounded by water.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the lights went out at NYU’s Tisch hospital — and then the back-up generators went out too:

More Reports from NYU Tisch hospital + backup generator failure. Personnel manually evacuating PICU and NICU down 9 flights of stairs. #TAN

— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) October 30, 2012

NYU nurses in pediatric ICU manually bagging patients on ventilators, according to a staffer. City begins emergency evacuation.

— Reuven Blau (@ReuvenBlau) October 30, 2012

Update: Here’s something you don’t see every day:

Update: A strange coincidence: I live in a different borough from Karol and Bethany, but my lights flickered too — for the first time all day — just before they posted this:

Same on UWS. RT @bethanyshondark Lights officially flickering in Washington Heights…

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) October 30, 2012

Could be a pure coincidence but it makes me wonder if maybe we’re headed for a citywide power outage a la 2003, not just the lower half of Manhattan.

Update: 911 in New York City is now getting 10 times as many calls in one half hour as it typically gets in an entire day.