The Virginia National Guard was authorized to call up to 300 personnel on state active duty for possible severe weather recovery operations from Hurricane Sandy.

In New Jersey, where Hurricane Sandy most likely to make landfall, Governor Chris Christie ordered a mandatory evacuation of the state's barrier islands, including the casino center Atlantic City, as well as the shutdown of 12 casinos by Sunday afternoon.

New York City also announced the closings of its mass transit and school systems and ordered residents to leave some low-lying areas on Sunday.

The National Hurricane Center extended its warning on Sunday urging residents of the mid-Atlantic coast to be prepared for life- threatening storm surges.

As of 11 a.m. ET, the storm was about 270 miles (434 km) southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Sandy is moving at a speed of 14 miles (23 km) per hour, and is expected to move parallel along the Southeast coast Sunday, approaching the mid- Atlantic coast by Monday night.

As Sandy approaches, the situation along the East Coast is lining up to repeat the "perfect storm" of 1991, which impacted around Halloween of that year. Just like in 1991, Sandy will meet up with cold front coming out of the Northwest and a high pressure system from Greenland, fueling it with enough energy to make it as powerful as, or even worse than the 1991 storm.

Because it is impacting around the time of Halloween, meteorologists have been using the term "Frankenstorm" to describe the havoc Sandy could wreck for the hundreds of millions of people living along the East Coast.