Hurricane Sandy, a Category 2 storm that slammed through Cuba Thursday with 110 mile-per-hour winds before making landfall in the Bahamas, has become "a major potential threat to the Northeast," according to the Associated Press.
Though there have been no reported deaths in eastern Cuba where the hurricane caused flooding, uprooted trees and ripped roofs off of buildings, it has already claimed four lives in the Caribbean.
Latest reports tracked the hurricane about 25 miles east of the Bahamas Great Exuma Island early Thursday afternoon, as it headed north at 20 miles per hour, with sustained winds of 105 miles per hour, the AP reported.
Meteorologists fear Hurricane Sandy, an early winter storm coming from the West and arctic air from the North will hit the East Coast all at once, starting Sunday night in a cataclysm of gale force winds, coastal flooding, power outages and even snow.
The prediction is that the effects will be felt along the entire Eastern Corridor from Florida to Maine, and inland as far as Ohio, the AP reported.
As of Wednesday, government scientists said the storm has a 70 percent chance of hitting the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
"It'll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod," said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting," the AP reported.
"It could be a Nor'easter on steroids," National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Thompson told NBC station WHDH-TV in Boston, as reported on NBC's website. "It's got the potential to rival the great Nor'easters of the past depending upon the eventual track it takes."
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