The United States on Sunday is bracing for the impact of an incredibly large Hurricane Sandy, which could affect a big portion of the East Coast, bringing flooding and gale force winds from mid-Atlantic to New England.

The National Hurricane Center warned Sunday residents of the mid-Atlantic coast should expect life-threatening storm surges, as Sandy is expected to be near hurricane force at landfall, forecast to be around Monday night.

As of 8 a.m. ET, the storm was about 260 miles (420 km) southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and about 395 miles ( 636 km) from New York City, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km). Sandy was moving at a speed of 10 miles (16 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.

Faced with an incoming storm, states from the Carolinas to Maine have been making preparation. Authorities are rushing to prepare for potentially devastating effects along a 700-mile (1, 126 km) stretch from the North Carolina-Virginia border to Connecticut, where Sandy could make landfall.

Public transit system are being affected. In New York City, all train and bus service will stop at 7 p.m. Sunday in advance of Hurricane Sandy, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced. The closure applies to subways and commuter rail service.

Airlines have canceled hundreds of flights into airports along the US east coast ahead of the arrival of a major storm, hundreds of domestic flights have been called off. Some international flights into New York and Washington were also canceled on Monday. Endi