Long Island in Hurricane Matthew's 'Cone of Uncertainty'

There's no need to make a mad dash to the supermarket for all the hurricane essentials, at least not yet. But the latest official track for Hurricane Matthew shows the storm impacting the region Saturday night and Sunday.

Matthew maintained powerful maximum sustained winds of 140 mph Tuesday night as its eye made landfall near Cuba's eastern tip. The National Hurricane Center warned in its 8 p.m. update that Matthew, a Category 4 storm, was likely to remain a "powerful" system well into Thursday night. (Sign up here to get the latest Hurrican Matthew updates straight to your inbox.)

A large portion of Florida is in Matthew's potential path Thursday. With the threat looming, hurricane watches have been issued in the area. In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley says she plans to ask 1.1 million people in coastal regions of the state to evacuate on Wednesday.

The current project storm track has Matthew approaching the Tri-State area on Saturday night as a considerably weaker hurricane. The National Weather Service says tropical storm conditions will be possible on Long Island at that time. By 2 p.m. Sunday, Matthew is expected to be just southeast of Montauk.

Long Island is smack dab in the middle of the storm's so-called "cone of uncertainty." Historical data indicates that the entire five-day path of the center of a tropical cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70 percent of the time, according to the NHC.

The National Weather Service has placed Long Island under a hazardous weather outlook due to the storm, but that outlook states that "there is still much uncertainty with the track of this system as we head into this weekend and too early to mention specific impacts."

What's clear at this point is that it is likely that Long Island will be impacted in some way by Hurricane Matthew this weekend.

"The severity of impacts in the Northeastern states will be dependent on the track of Matthew and its interaction with a storm system approaching from the west this weekend," said Dan Kottlowski, a hurricane expert for AccuWeather.