Hurricane Sandy has resulted in an extraordinary amount of flooding in Manhattan (particularly lower Manhattan) as storm surges broke all kinds of records.

As of Tuesday morning, much of the flooding has receded.

The Battery Park neighborhood -- a low lying area that was one of the worst-hit neighborhoods -- is free of water, but the damage and after math is going to be huge. And there are still two high tides that could still cause flooding today.

In the meantime, the damage from the water alone is going result in an enormous cleanup. Power outages and subway flooding will result in a major inconvenience for days.

Below is some characterization and images of the worst of the destruction but before you view them, check out this dispatch from the NYT's Hurricane liveblog, which describes cars floating down Wall Street... it should help make the below images more believable:

As the evening high tide was drawing closer, there were reports of flooding in several low-lying areas around the five boroughs, places that had not in recent memory experienced flooding. In Lower Manhattan, water crossed South Street, and cars could be seen floating on Wall Street on television screens at the ConEd headquarters. In Brooklyn, water had piled back onto Van Brundt Street — which flooded during the morning high tide — well in advance of the evening high water mark. At 7:25 p.m., Ninth Street in Gowanus was a nearly uncrossable river of water.

On CNN, Erin Burnett, is walking through several inches of water, and it's still rising. Here's a shot from Twitter Bill Karins:

And here's an amazing shot from @AlexSilverman of a grocery store near Battery Park (which happens to be where I frequently shop)

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley tweets: "Knee deep on 8th"

Below are some pictures of unverifiable origin. We can't confirm which ones are real. We've seen corroborations of them, and denials, so just know that they're being passed around.

Carlos Whitt tweeted this picture, which is at 14th and Avenue C (not near The Battery).

This picture is making the rounds on Twitter, and it's supposedly the Lower East Side. We can't confirm that it's real.

Here's another shot that is said to be 14th Street and Avenue C:

From Chase Cain on 1st Avenue:

From Anupreeta Das, 22nd Street and 10th Ave.

Seawater is flooding into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel:

The FDR Drive:

This is supposedly video of a PATH station flooding... We've seen reports that it will take many days to a week to get the subways pumped out.