Hurricane Sandy is churning in the Atlantic, and approaching New York. Preparations for the serious storm have caused the area TV stations to cover the impending destruction.

Most of the city stations took Mayor Bloomberg’s briefings live and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie‘s comments. WCBS/Channel 2 left wall-to-wall mode at 1 p.m. to join the New York Jets game. However, sister station WLNY TV 10/55, anchored by Cindy Hsu, broke into the Munsters Marathon for the latest Christie press conference.

Channel 2, though, was first to bring in the main team. At halftime of the Jets game, viewers got another sense of the severity as Maurice DuBois and Kristine Johnson assumed the coverage with Lonnie Quinn tracking the potentially deadly storm.

“I’ll be with you all night, guys,” Quinn said.

At the same time, over on Channel 5, early morning co-anchor Steve Lacy teamed with weekend anchor Christina Park. Nick Gregory was already in place at the “weather center.”

Throughout the afternoon, WNBC/Channel 4 called on weekday anchor Tom Llamas with Erika Tarantal to get viewers the vital information. Most of station’s weather department has been on the air: Raphael Miranda, Steve Villaneuva, and Chris Cimino. Lead meteorologist Janice Huff, at the time of this writing, has not been seen as part of the coverage.

WABC/Channel 7, even with nonstop coverage, has been slow to add a main presence. The station maintained its weekend anchors on the desk, Joe Torres and Sandra Bookman. Moreover, weekend meteorogists Amy Freeze and Jeff Smith have been on “Sandy duty.” Senior meteorologist Bill Evans is now at the “weather wall” for WABC.

Update: By the evening, Chuck Scarborough and Shiba Russell took over WNBC’s coverage, while Bill Ritter joined Liz Cho on WABC.