Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm, is now among the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded over the Atlantic Ocean, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. Some reports had said that the hurricane is so strong that it is showing up on devices used to measure earthquakes.
On Wednesday, the storm first made landfall on Caribbean island Barbuda, which has a population of about 2,000.
The US National Hurricane Center said Irma is “potentially catastrophic” and has urged that preparations to protect life and property should be sped up. Irma is expected to “bring life-threatening wind, storm surge, and rainfall hazards” to portions of the northern Leeward Islands, including the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
The storm is then forecast to travel through Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos by Friday. The Bahamas, Cuba and Florida are also likely to be affected. However, it is too soon to specify timing and magnitude of these impacts, the agency said.
At 11 pm Atlantic Standard Time on Tuesday, Irma was about 80 km from the Leeward Islands. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 295 kmph and was heading west northwest at 20 kmph.
Other storms in the region that were this strong, reaching speeds of 295 kmph or more, include Allen in 1980, Wilma in 2005, Gilbert in 1988 and a Florida Key storm in 1935.
Florida and Puerto Rico had declared an emergency on Monday, when Irma was still a category 4 storm.
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