US News

East Coast likely to dodge hurricane, but flooding looms

New Yorkers breathed a collective sigh of relief Friday after forecasters predicted that Hurricane Joaquin would likely lumber northward well off the East Coast — sparing the Big Apple from a Sandy-like disaster.

“There is very little data to support a US landfall,” Christina Speciale, a meteorologist with Weather­Works, told The Post. “The worst-case scenario is it could brush by Cape Cod next week as a Category 1 hurricane.”

But New York, New Jersey and Connecticut aren’t entirely off the hook, with a good chance of drenching rains and coastal flooding from another storm system soaking the tri-state region through the weekend, data show.

Residents who were battered by Hurricane Sandy three years ago were thankful they had apparently dodged a bullet. Brian Kelley, 55, who lives a block from the beach in Far Rockaway, has been staying on top of the news to see whether he’d have to evacuate.

“Now we’re hearing it’s going to blow over and head east, so we’re not worried about it,” said Kelly, whose home was damaged during Sandy. “I’m relieved I don’t need to battle any storm because in the end, the storm is always going to win.”

Marie Lane, 78, who lives in an oceanfront building in Far Rockaway, said she was leaving her fate in God’s hands.

“They’re saying it’s going to be a lot of rain, but the rest is up to the man upstairs,” she said. “We really don’t know until it happens.”

Gov. Cuomo, meanwhile, said he didn’t trust forecasters because they had been wrong in the past, and that the state, MTA and Port Authority were still preparing for the worst.

“When you look at that spaghetti bowl of possible tracks of the hurricane . . . I would not be utterly shocked if we turned on the broadcast and they said, ‘Guess what? The hurricane changed trajectory,’ ” he said.

The slow-moving Joaquin was a Category 3 storm as of Friday evening.