This Sunday’s Eagles game in Washington D.C. was already set to be messy. Bradford vs. Cousins. Sloppy passing vs. sloppy everything. And that was before a hurricane was headed D.C.’s way.

Hurricane Joaquin – sounding very destructive thanks to Mr. Phoenix – has set its sights on the Bahamas, and may have a serious effect on wind and precipitation on Sunday in our nation’s capital.

CBS 3’s Kate Bilo said it’s a bit early to totally predict, but the rain could be… intense. According to the Weather Channel:

Residents along the East Coast of the U.S. should pay close attention to the forecast now through this weekend. It’s a particularly difficult forecast that hinges on the behavior of several different atmospheric features over North America and the North Atlantic Ocean.

Computer forecast models – and the meteorologists who rely on them for guidance – are grappling with a complex interaction between Joaquin, a cold front near the East Coast, the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida, a strong bubble of high pressure aloft over the North Atlantic Ocean, and a potentially strong area of low pressure aloft digging into the southeastern U.S. later this week.

As always, different models say different things. The American GFS model, according to TWC, shows Joaquin making an “alarming northwestward turn, slamming it right into Virginia and Maryland this weekend.” Some models show it hooking right off into the Atlantic, missing the Eastern Seaboard almost completely. If you’re into weather models, there’s some serious model-porn over at the EPAWA website showing a plethora of potential paths. From now until Saturday, the D.C. area could see over a foot of rain, and the EPAWA thinks that could continue:

This could very easily carry into Sunday/Monday with remnant rain/showers. There is the potential for this system to make landfall along the eastern seaboard, favoring a south of Norfolk, VA landfall if it does, and most likely as a hurricane. As we stated earlier, this system does NOT need to make landfall to bring heavy rains to this area.

Nothing good happens at FedEx Field, but this could be exceptionally messy.