Windy weddings and rocky cruises: How East Coasters are braving the nor'easter this weekend

John Garrisi, left, and Gaige Graf move an outdoor table away from the shorefront during the early stages of a nor'easter storm on Friday. Robert F. Bukaty/AP hide caption

Talia Manno opened her door on Saturday morning to waves lapping halfway up the front steps to her Atlantic City, N.J., home.

"It got up to my fifth step," Manno said. "I was really freaking out."

Manno, a lifelong resident, said the last time water came that high was during Hurricane Sandy .

"Even if you live here and you see high tide and flooding, that was really scary and it happened so fast," she said.

Manno is among tens of millions of people from the mid-Atlantic through the coast of Maine who are in the path of a powerful and rare September nor'easter that is bringing coastal flooding, heavy rain and high winds this weekend.

Nearly 80,000 people were without power across New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as of Saturday evening, according to the PowerOutage.com map. The storm is expected to continue hitting the Jersey Shore, New York City, and Eastern Massachusetts into Sunday, according to NWS.

Videos posted on social media Saturday showed streets inundated with water in New Jersey, and massive waves hitting the coast . In New York City, people were seen kayaking in the streets . New Jersey and New York declared states of emergency in counties across the two states, including in New York City.