New York City officials will try to evacuate residents from some low-lying waterfront neighbourhoods as a new storm system approaches just over a week after superstorm Sandy devastated the region.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the Wednesday voluntary evacuations ahead of the nor'easter's arrival would not be as widespread as the mandatory ones ordered before Sandy hit the city last week.
The mayor also said the city's parks and beaches would be closed at noon on Wednesday for at least 24 hours.
"We just don't need to send our first responders into the ocean to save someone who is being foolish," Mr Bloomberg said.
A nor'easter is expected to hit later on Wednesday, bringing the threat of more heavy rain, snow and flooding.
But some forecasts on Tuesday showed the storm to come in weaker and farther offshore than first expected.
Even so, strong winds could still gust to 55mph in New York and New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon and evening, and there was concern about the ocean barreling past beaches and dunes that were largely washed away.
Farther south, coastal Virginia could also get a storm surge of up to 3 feet, causing minor flooding on the east side of Chesapeake Bay during high tides on Wednesday morning and evening, said the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters.
National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina warned: "Prepare for more outages. Stay indoors. Stock up again."
Sky News weather producer Joanna Robinson said: "There's still some uncertainty about the exact path of the storm, but the nor'easter could produce heavy rain, heavy snow and strong winds.
"The new storm wouldn't be as severe as Sandy, but even so it could be an intense storm that will hamper recovery work in areas affected by Sandy - for example strong winds could bring down trees that are already unstable."
Large swathes of New York City have been getting back to normal, but now face the challenge of thousands of commuters, students and motorists - forced out of their cars by fuel shortages - descending on public transport systems not fully ready for them.
At the same time, government leaders are grappling with a daunting longer-term problem: where to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of people whose homes could be uninhabitable for weeks or months because of a combination of storm damage and cold weather.
Mr Bloomberg said earlier in the week that 30,000 to 40,000 New Yorkers may need to be relocated - a monumental task in a city where housing is scarce and expensive - though he said that number will probably drop to 20,000 within a couple of weeks as power is restored in more places.
George W Contreras, associate director of the emergency and disaster management programme at Metropolitan College of New York, speculated that large encampments of trailers might be set up at a stadium, in a park or in some other open space in the city - something he could not recall being done in New York ever before.
"The amount of actual units the city might have in buildings is probably very limited, so I think people will be in FEMA shelters for a while," he said.
With temperatures already sinking 1C to 4C overnight and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses still without electricity, people have been sleeping in layers of clothes, and New York City officials handed out blankets and urged victims to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centres.
In heavily-flooded Staten Island, Sara Zavala spent the night under two blankets and layers of clothing because the power was out.
She had a propane heater, but only turned it on for a couple of hours in the morning. She did not want to sleep with it running at night.
"When I woke up, I was like 'It's freezing' and I thought 'This can't go on too much longer'," said Ms Zavala, a nursing home admissions coordinator.
A week after Sandy hit the New Jersey coastline in an assault that killed more than 113 people in the US and Canada, petrol shortages persist across the region and rationing by registration plate got under way in northern New Jersey in an echo of the fuel crisis of the 1970s.
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