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Hurricane Maria is thrashing the Caribbean

Hurricane Maria, the third-strongest hurricane ever to hit the US, left 100% of Puerto Rico without power. It's on the move in the Caribbean.

  • Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico on Wednesday, making landfall as a powerful Category 4 storm with 155-mph winds, according to the National Hurricane Center. It left 100% of the island without power.
  • Maria hit the island of Dominica at 9:15 p.m. ET on Monday as a Category 5 storm — the first in history there — and reports indicated "widespread devastation."
  • At least 26 people have been killed by the storm so far on its journey through the Caribbean, just two weeks after Hurricane Irma.
  • Hurricane conditions are currently being felt in
  • Turks and Caicos.

Hurricane Maria is crawling toward Turks and Caicos with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.

The storm is moving northwest at 7 mph, after causing widespread destruction in Puerto Rico and bringing hurricane conditions to the Dominican Republic. Hurricane warnings are in effect for Turks and Caicos, the southeastern Bahamas, and parts of the Dominican Republic.

The storm has left at least 26 people dead in the Caribbean so far, according to reports, but more casualties are expected. The storm pounded Puerto Rico for hours as the third-strongest storm ever to hit US territory.

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Early reports from Puerto Rico described intense damage. Cellphone communications failed as towers went down. The Puerto Rican emergency-management agency said 100% of the island was without power by Wednesday afternoon and that Maria had damaged "everything in its path," according to reports.

According to the NHC, the eye of the "potentially catastrophic" storm is expected to pass near or just east of Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas Friday and Saturday. The storm has grown since it left Puerto Rico, with hurricane-force winds extending 70 miles from its center.

The NHC said preparations for life-threatening storm surge, rainfall flooding, and destructive winds "should be rushed to completion" in areas not yet hit by the brunt of the storm.

The center has also warned that some of the greatest risks Maria poses come from its storm surge, which is accompanied by "large and destructive waves." The southeastern Bahamas and Turks and Caicos could see 9- to 12-foot surges above normal tide levels.

It's still too soon to say whether the continental US will be in Maria's path after it crosses the Caribbean, but models project Maria will turn north and head out to sea. Swells generated by the storm should reach portions of the US' southeastern coast today, however.

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Maria caused widespread destruction as it engulfed Puerto Rico, where residents were just starting to recover from Hurricane Irma. The island avoided a direct hit from Irma, but its powerful storm surge and winds still caused many residents to lose power.

Maria's direct hit was devastating.

"The San Juan that we knew yesterday is no longer here," Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told MSNBC on Wednesday night of the island's capital. The mayor said Puerto Rico, home to some 3.5 million people, was "looking at four to six months without electricity."

Wind gauges throughout the island broke, making it impossible to know just how strong the most intense gusts were at the height of the storm.

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Gov. Ricardo Rossello of Puerto Rico announced Wednesday afternoon that he was instituting a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

The director of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, said on CNN on Wednesday morning that 3,200 agency staff members were in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands with supplies, and that they were better prepared in the areas before this storm than they were when Irma hit.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico, making federal disaster-relief funding available to much of the island.

Before the storm arrived the public safety commissioner of Puerto Rico had told those in evacuation zones: "You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you're going to die."

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Maria first made landfall on the island of Dominica on Monday night. Although the destruction is still being assessed, Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, wrote on his Facebook page: "Initial reports are of widespread devastation ... The winds have swept away the roofs of almost every person I have spoken to or otherwise made contact with."

The hurricane was the first Category 5 storm in recorded history to hit Dominica, which is home to roughly 70,000 people. The last and only Category 4 storm to directly hit the island nation, Hurricane David in 1979, killed more than 50 people and left 60,000 homeless.

"The roof to my own official residence was among the first to go and this apparently triggered an avalanche of torn away roofs in the city and the countryside," Skerrit wrote on Facebook.

The bands of the storm also slammed the nearby island of Guadeloupe, causing serious flooding, damage to buildings, and widespread power losses.

Maria lost some strength as its eye moved over Dominica but quickly regained its Category 5 status.

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On the islands of St. Thomas and St. John in the US Virgin Islands, residents were urged to leave their homes for government shelters, since Irma damaged many houses.

Trump also approved an emergency declaration for the Virgin Islands on Monday, giving FEMA the go-ahead to coordinate disaster relief efforts there. Some of the soldiers who came to the Virgin Islands to provide relief after Irma were evacuated.

"Take this event seriously," Gov. Kenneth Mapp of the US Virgin Islands said at a press conference Sunday. "You cannot stay in those facilities. You will not survive."

He urged people who decided to stay in their homes to write their Social Security numbers on their bodies so they could be identified easily in a worst-case scenario.

St. Croix, the most populated of the US Virgin Islands, took a hit from the outer eyewall, to the right of Maria's eye. According to reports, vegetation was stripped bare by the storm, wind measurement equipment failed, and many were left without power.

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Maria is the seventh hurricane of an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season, making this only the ninth year on record with seven hurricanes by September 17. There have been 13 named storms so far — the average by September 18 is 7.6.

This season is also significantly ahead of the average measures for major hurricane days and accumulated cyclone energy (a measure of storm strength, duration, and frequency). Maria is pushing those measures even further ahead.

On September 15, Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project issued a two-week forecast of above-normal cyclone activity for the Atlantic basin.

Jose, which was a Category 4 hurricane at its peak but is now a post-tropical cyclone, is still churning near the East Coast but should stay offshore. The storm is nonetheless bringing tropical storm conditions — including winds, rainfall, and dangerous surf — to southern New England.

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Erin Brodwin, Rebecca Harrington, Bryan Logan, and Dana Varinsky contributed to this post.

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