Jose became a hurricane Wednesday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its 5 p.m. advisory for the storm. The Category 1 storm is more than 1,000 miles from the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.
Hurricane Irma — one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic — is battering the northern Virgin Islands and hurtling toward Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon after smashing a string of small northern Caribbean islands, where at least two people were killed.
Irma’s core slammed Barbuda early Wednesday before moving over St. Martin and Anguilla and parts of the British Virgin Islands. Its maximum sustained winds of 185 mph were well above the 157 mph threshold of a Category 5 storm.
Irma’s powerful center could pass just north of Puerto Rico — a US territory of about 3.4 million people — on Wednesday afternoon and night, threatening heavy rain and dangerous coastal storm surges, forecasters said.
CNN’s Leyla Santiago, in the capital of San Juan, said there were already power outages as strong winds lashed the island and the center of the storm moved just off the northeast coast.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló urged Puerto Ricans in flood-prone areas to head to designated shelters.
“Please allow us to help you seek refuge in shelter, and let people know the priority is to weather the storm (and) seek safe haven,” Rossello said.
On Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands, Kennedy Banda said fierce winds blew out the windows of his home Wednesday afternoon. He and his family were taking shelter in a bathroom; he said he was bracing his body against the door in an attempt to keep it shut.
“Everything is blown out,” he told CNN by phone near Road Town. “Everything is gone.”
Earlier, he posted video on Facebook showing wind and pounding rain whipping the shoreline as Irma’s core approached.
The hurricane earlier Wednesday battered a string of northern Caribbean island nations, situated east of the more populous Virgin Islands group and Puerto Rico.
Early reports suggested damage on parts of the smaller islands — a tropical region popular with tourists.
Barbuda, home to about 1,600 people, was “so badly damaged that there is no communication” from the island, said Keithley Meade, director of a meteorological office in Antigua and Barbuda.
“We have a lot of broken trees across the island,” Meade said from Antigua, whose 80,000 people comprise most of the two-island nation’s population.
Irma destroyed four of the most solid government buildings on the French-administered portion of nearby St. Martin, an island of about 75,000 people, French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said Wednesday in Paris.
It’s likely that all other older buildings there have at least been damaged, he said.
Parts of the Caribbean island of St. Martin are left flooded Wednesday after Irma hit.
Roughly 10 of these smaller islands — such as St. Martin, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis — were pounded by hurricane conditions. One, Guadeloupe, has about 405,000 residents. The rest have about 264,400 people combined.
Latest developments
— At least two people died and two others were seriously injured in the islands of St. Barts and St. Martin, French Overseas Affairs Minister Annick Girardin said.
— Around 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, Irma’s core was spinning about 90 miles east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph.
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— In the US Virgin Islands, Gov. Kenneth E. Mapp ordered a 36-hour curfew that started at 6 a.m. local time Wednesday.
— On Thursday, Irma is likely to be near the Dominican Republic’s and Haiti’s northern coasts. That night, it is expected to be near the Turks and Caicos islands and the southeastern Bahamas, where storm surges of up to 20 feet are possible, the hurricane center said.
— It’s too early to tell whether it will make landfall on the US mainland. Computer models show it could churn near Florida’s east coast by late Sunday, and forecasters warn the core still could hit the Florida peninsula.
— In Broward County, Florida, a mandatory evacuation will go into effect at noon Thursday for areas east of Federal Highway, Mayor Barbara Sharief said. The evacuation zone includes low-lying areas and mobile homes in the county, which includes Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach.
— Floridians should heed any evacuation order, Gov. Rick Scott said Wednesday. “(A) storm surge could cover your house. We can rebuild homes — we cannot rebuild your family,” he said.
— Several high-profile sports games have been postponed in Florida because of the storm, including NFL’s Buccaneers-Dolphins match that had been scheduled for Sunday in Miami.