The computer models are all over the place on this one, but the good news is (fingers crossed), the majority of them this morning have Hurricane Joaquin moving offshore. So there's that hope for us (not so much for the Bahamas, where the slow-moving storm will sit all day).
Even if Joaquin doesn't make a direct landfall, there will still be major flooding for much of the East Coast. This storm is getting stronger, and your basic Historic Rainfall Event is expected, even if it only sideswipes the coast. (Athens, Georgia may get as much as two feet of rain.)
But the other possibly very bad news is, this morning's National Hurricane Center model still shows it making landfall somewhere in the DC-Phila-NYC corridor, and because of the dense population, that could be very, very bad.
So if you live anywhere near the coast, stay informed and track this storm.