For more than a day, monstrous Hurricane Irma has sustained Category 5 winds of 185 miles per hour while ripping through the northern Lesser Antilles and Virgin Islands. The storm, tied for the second-strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, is battering Puerto Rico, and headed for the southeastern Bahamas and, by the weekend and early next week, Florida and the Southeast U.S.

“The threat of direct hurricane impacts in Florida over the weekend and early next week has increased,” the National Hurricane Center said in its 5 p.m. update Wednesday.

This is a life-threatening storm that the Hurricane Center warns is capable of catastrophic damage. Preparations should be rushed to completion near its path.

At 9 p.m. Wednesday, the storm was 50 miles north-northwest of San Juan and was barreling to the west-northwest at 16 mph, moving away from the northernmost Virgin Islands.

The storm’s heavy rain bands which had been lashing Puerto Rico into the evening were starting to retreat north of the island. Still flash flood warnings remained in effect. In a bit of fortunate news, the storm’s eyewall, the region with most destructive winds, had passed to its north.

Still a gust of 63 miles per hour was clocked in San Juan early Wednesday evening and up to 300,000 power outages were reported. In Culebra, Puerto Rico, a small island 17 miles east of the mainland, a wind gust registered 111 miles per hour during the afternoon.

As the storm heads west, hurricane warnings are in effect for the Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos, Haiti and the southeastern and central Bahamas. A hurricane watch covers Cuba and the northwestern Bahamas.

This historically intense hurricane, maintaining winds of over 180 miles per hour longer than any Atlantic storm on record, is forecast to modestly weaken in the next two days, but remain an extremely dangerous Category 4 or 5 storm. It will produce the full gamut of hurricane hazards across the Bahamas and potentially South Florida, including a devastating storm surge, destructive winds and dangerous flash flooding.

Meanwhile, two new hurricanes formed late Wednesday afternoon in the Atlantic basin: Jose in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Katia in the southwest Gulf of Mexico (see more information down below).

source: AFP