Hurricane Maria is now an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 8 p.m. advisory.
The storm has 160 mph maximum sustained winds.
It is too soon to know whether or not Maria will impact the U.S. coast, including the Carolinas.
Maria is one of three storms churning in the Atlantic Ocean, but it poses the most danger to the hurricane-battered Caribbean.
Maria will affect portions of the Leeward Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands as an extremely dangerous major hurricane in the next couple of days and hurricane warnings are in effect for many of these islands, the National Hurricane Center said.
Maria is likely to affect Puerto Rico as an extremely dangerous major hurricane. A hurricane warning has been issued for Puerto Rico.
The potential for life-threatening storm surge accompanied by large and destructive waves has increased for the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Life-threatening flash floods and mudslides from heavy rainfall are also expected across those islands.
roastplantain on September 19th, 2017 at 10:51 UTC »
A lot of roofs are gone. At least 3 of my friends lost their roofs. Another friend's house started flooding well before it hit a Cat 4. My uncle is trapped in his village because if downed powerlines and landslide. My aunt lives across from the sea no one has heaed from her. No one can reach anyone. We haven't heard from my stepmom's mom yet.
What makes it worse is that it hit at night and no one can see where water was coming from.
roastplantain on September 19th, 2017 at 02:51 UTC »
It made landfall on my country of Dominica a few minutes ago. The prime minister's roof is gone. So is the roof of the mqin hospital. Dominica was sending aid to victims of Irma in st Martin, and now she's gonna need some help herself.
Edit: Nobody really prepared to leave cuz it was only supposed to be a Cat 3. There's no place to evacuate to anyway. The ironic thing is that we were helping VI ans St Martin and now it's our turn to suffer. There are a lot of Dominicans in VI and SXM and some came home to suffer this too.
There's really no communication out of Dominica. Only ham radio operators. The main radio station lost it's roof and stopped broadcasting late last night.
The prime minister's official residence lost it's roof. Word is the main hospital lost it's roof too. My friends in my WhatsApp group chat lost thier roofs. One friend said her house was destroyed. A lot of lost roofs it seems.
We couldn't survive a tropical storm much less for this. I have a lot of family there. Hopefully no news is good news. Hopefully it's just property damage. Beacuse it hit at night I suspect a lot of people were on their phones all night and since there's no power there's no way to charge their cell phones and that's why there's no communication. Landlines are down too cuz the lines are above ground.
goldenraven54 on September 19th, 2017 at 00:17 UTC »
Damn, the Caribbeans can't catch a break this season.