Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico just after 6:15 a.m. this morning as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155mph. It has since been downgraded to a Category 2 with winds at 110mph off the northwest coast of Puerto Rico. Homes are flooding and power lines have been downed across the entire island. Officials predict entire towns will have to be rebuilt.
Hurricane Maria will be "potentially catastrophic" as it hits Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as a "likely" Category 5 storm over the next 24 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The biggest threats: Maria currently packs sustained winds of 165 mph and is forecast to deluge the islands in its path with about a foot of rain and seven to nine feet of storm surge. In its latest update, the NHC branded the storm as "life-threatening," and urged those in its path to "rush to completion" any remaining preparations prior to landfall.
Hurricane Maria ripped through the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm yesterday, making landfall on the island of Dominica with winds reaching 160mph, per The Telegraph. Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, wrote in a Facebook post early Tuesday morning that the island has "lost all what money can buy and replace" and initial reports are of "widespread devastation."
Maria's path: The storm is expected to travel along roughly the same route as Hurricane Irma, including Martinique, Puerto Rico, the U.S. and British Virgin islands, Barbuda, Anguilla, Barbados and the Eastern Dominican Republic, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm could make landfall in Puerto Rico as early as Tuesday night.
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