The facade of a four-story building on 14th Street and 8th Avenue collapsed onto the sidewalk, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, in New York. Hurricane Sandy bore down on the Eastern Seaboard's largest cities Monday, forcing the shutdown of mass transit, schools and financial markets, sending coastal residents fleeing, and threatening a dangerous mix of high winds, soaking rain and a surging wall of water up to 11 feet tall. (AP Photo/ John Minchillo)

Forecasters in the US say that the centre of Superstorm Sandy has roared ashore on the New Jersey coast, packing high winds and a life-threatening storm surge.

The National Hurricane Centre in Miami said the centre of the enormous storm made landfall at 8pm near Atlantic City after it was reclassified from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone.

Sandy had sustained winds of 85mph. Forecasters say it is no longer a hurricane, but was still a vast and dangerous hybrid storm.

Sandy is combining with a wintry storm from the west and cold air from the Arctic.

The superstorm could menace some 50 million people in the nation’s most heavily-populated corridor, from big East Coast cities to the Great Lakes.

Just before roaring ashore, the National Hurricane Centre announced that it considered Sandy no longer a hurricane but had turned into a wintry hybrid.