Photo taken on Oct. 29, 2012 shows the Queens Bridge and flooded shore on Roosevelt Island of New York, the United States. [Xinhua]

Record winds and flooding from superstorm Sandy hammered New York on Monday, killing at least two people and leaving wide sections of the city without power.

The superstorm, which put a huge swath of Manhattan from Midtown to Battery park in darkness, also forced hospital evacuations and left a huge construction crane dangling in the powerful gales 75 stories over a posh thoroughfare.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the superstorm, which forecasters downgraded from a hurricane just before it made landfall in southern New Jersey, a "once in a long time storm."

The mayor urged New Yorkers to stay off the streets, warning "the worst of the weather has come."

New York was hit with gale force winds reaching 85 mph and a record 13-foot storm surge, exacerbated by a full moon at high tide.

One man was reportedly killed when a wind-toppled tree crushed his home and a woman was electrocuted by a downed electrical wire, both in the New York borough of Queens, a fire department spokesman told Xinhua.

CBS New York reported three other people were killed outside the city, including two teenage boys, when a tree fell on a house in North Salem, N.Y..