Hurricane Joaquin is on track to hit New York

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While Hurricane Joaquin slams into the Bahamas, forecasts are looking as if the storm will be headed directly up the East Coast toward New York.

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Joaquin forecast

NOAA

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, the National Hurricane Center forecasts that Joaquin will be off the coast of New Jersey and New York by Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. At that point, the winds, which are currently at 125 mph will have died down to 65 mph, making it a projected tropical storm.

Marshall Shepherd, the director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, told Business Insider that his concern for Joaquin was not so much the storm itself and whether or not it will make landfall in the US, but what it will do to the rain that's already hitting the northeastern part of the US.

"If and when it makes landfall in the US, it will be a different storm," he said. "The Bahamas are experiencing the hurricane at its strongest. But it might be just as treacherous because of all the rain."

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