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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Haroon Siddique (now) , Pádraig Collins , Michael Slezak, Claire Phipps, Nicola Slawson and Alan Yuhas (earlier)

Florida awaits full impact of Irma as storm makes landfall – as it happened

Summary

What we know so far

  • Hurricane Irma, a category 4 storm, has hit the lower Florida Keys. Gusts of 91mph have already been recorded at Key West with 71mph recorded at Fort Lauderdale.
  • A warning from the National Weather Service in Key West warned people to “take action now to protect your life”. It said: “If you are here, please go to interior room away from windows. Treat these imminent extreme winds as if a tornado was approaching and move immediately to the safe room in your shelter.”
  • As Hurricane Irma moves through the Caribbean, President Trump has issued emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico. A major disaster declaration has also been issued for the US Virgin Islands.
  • Amid urgent warnings from state officials to evacuate before it was too late, downtown Miami was all but abandoned on Saturday.
  • Residents in the British Virgin Islands have described a scene of “utter devastation” in the wake of Irma.
  • The United Kingdom Overseas Territories Association (UKOTA) has criticised the response of the UK government as slow, urging it to “commit immediate resources” but also to develop the long term economic self-sustainability of the territories.
  • The UK defence secretary, Michael Fallon, said the government’s response had been “as good [as that] of anyone else” and claimed France was now asking it for help.
  • The Cuban capital Havana has flooded and 5,000 tourists have been evacuated after Irma raked the country’s north coast.
  • Prime minister William Marlin of the Dutch island St Maarten says about 1,600 tourists who were in the Dutch Caribbean territory have been evacuated and efforts are being made to move 1,200 more.
  • A Florida sheriff has advised people not to shoot at the hurricane as this could backfire.

CBS4 chief meteorologist Craig Setzer says the eye of Irma has missed Key West.

Wind speeds on land are increasing, reports meteorologist Adam Berg:

This is another spectacular video from Fort Lauderdale, Florida:

The United Kingdom Overseas Territories Association (UKOTA) has criticised the response of the UK government - defended earlier by defence secretary Michael Fallon - to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Irma.

David Burt, UKOTA president and premier of Bermuda, said:

There is an urgent need for health and social welfare support which must be met now. We welcome the commitment from the UK government in providing some immediate resources to British Nationals within the Caribbean, while questioning the adequacy of its response in other areas such as a regional reconstruction fund, and the two-week wait for the arrival of HMS Ocean.

We note that the House of Commons Foreign Affairs and International Development Select Committees have raised these issues in terms as well. The overseas territories are diverse in our constitutions, populations and economic sustainability, encompassing the Caribbean, Europe, and most remote islands in the South Atlantic. We therefore call upon the UK government not only to commit immediate resources but also to examine and develop the long term economic self-sustainability of the overseas territories.

This is what Key West looks like now:

The warning from the National Weather Service Key West spells out the situation for people in the Florida Keys in stark terms:

If you are here, please go to interior room away from windows. Treat these imminent extreme winds as if a tornado was approaching and move immediately to the safe room in your shelter. Take action now to protect your life. You should already be taking cover.

The power of Irma is captured in this video just posted on Twitter by Simon Brewer, who describes himself, among other things, as an “extreme weather journalist”:

This video was taken in the last few minutes by a Miami Herald reporter in Key West:

The eye of the hurricane has reached the lower Florida Keys and moves ever closer to Key West:

Updated

The mayor of Miami Beach, Philip Levine, told CBS News This Morning the shift west of Hurricane Irma would spare Miami “the big brunt of it” but added:

The storm is so massive, it’s so huge it doesn’t make a difference if the actual core/centre doesn’t go over Miami, Miami Beach. We are still receiving and going to be receiving hurricane force winds and of course we are very concerned about the tidal surges.

This is what Hurricane Irma looked like on the radar a few minutes ago:

This is the latest tornado warning from the National Weather Service:

More than four million children are currently in Hurricane Irma’s path throughout Florida, with millions more at risk in the southeastern United States, according to Save the Children, which has urged action to address climate change in order to prevent the frequency of such storms.

Carolyn Miles, president and chief executive of Save the Children in the United States, said:

There are a multitude of risks to children during storms such as Irma—including storm damage, the chance of separation from parents and the psychological impacts of natural disaster.

We urge parents to do everything they can to help keep their children safe and out of harm’s way, including talking to their children about the storm, filling out an In Case of Emergency card and evacuating to shelters or safer areas when told to do so by authorities.

The charity has delivered kits to establish child-friendly areas within shelters, so that children have space to psychologically recover from their ordeal through play. In addition, baby and toddler items such as flat-pack cribs, strollers, baby wash basins and infant hygiene supplies will be available to help families who had to evacuate without much-needed items for their children.

Save the Children’s emergency health unit - a surge team of nurses and doctors deployed to the heart of disasters in their critical first stages - is on standby in the Caribbean to help victims of the storm.

Its director, Unni Krishnan, said:

As a humanitarian agency, Save the Children’s priority in the next few days will be to get life-saving aid to areas worst affected by Hurricane Irma, and reach children stranded in remote pockets. But the best way to beat a hurricane is to stop it from happening - and addressing climate change is a key step in reducing the frequency – and ferocity – of storms in the future.

Investing in disaster risk reduction and bolstering the resilience of communities are crucial to break the cycle of disasters and miseries they bring.

This video shows the impact of Irma on Miami Beach even before the eye of the hurricane has reached landfall:

Meteorologist Jim Cantore points out that Hurricane Donna landed in Key West on the same date 57 years ago:

Updated

The National Hurricane Center says that Hurricane Irma is about 40 miles (65km) south to south-east of Key West with the maximum sustained winds still at 130mph (210kph).

This is the advice issued by the National Weather Service in Key West:

The UK’s defence secretary has defended the response by the UK to Hurricane Irma amid allegations that it has not been as effective in helping its territories as the likes of France and Holland.

Michael Fallon, told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show that the UK response, which he is responsible for, had been “as good as [that of] anyone else”. He also claimed that France has asked the UK for assistance. He said:

We weren’t late, we pre-positioned a ship in the Caribbean for the hurricane season. It wasn’t by chance that Mounts Bay, a huge 16,000 tonne aid ship with marines, with helicopter, with palettes of aid was in the Caribbean. She’s already been helping Anguilla, she’s already moved on to help the British Virgin Islands and it wasn’t until Thursday when we were clear about where most help was needed and we were clear which airfields were useable.

Then we started the airlifts - three flights went in on Friday, two went in yesterday, three more are going in today. We are putting in troops, we’re putting in additional helicopters and palettes of aid, backed up by police, medics and engineers.

Fallon said there were police officers and 120 British troops on the British Virgin Islands where there has been looting.

In just four hours, the rainfall record for Fort Pierce, Florida, for this date has been broken, according to the National Weather Service.

These videos show the scene in Miami:

Tornado warning issued for Florida

Warnings have been issued of the risk of tornadoes across Florida tonight.

Hurricane Irma is expected to reach Key West within the next couple of hours.

The mayor of Tarpon Springs, in Pinellas County, Chris Alakouzos, which has the highest concentration of Greeks of any city in the US, has has been called by the president of Greece as Florida braces for Hurricane Irma.

Greece’s head of state Prokopis Pavlopoulos told the mayor that the nation’s thoughts were with the people of Tarpon Springs.

Speaking to Greece’s state-run TV, ERT, Alakouzos said most citizens “had wanted to leave for other states like New York, New Jersey,” after he called a mandatory state of emergency on Saturday. Around 60% of Tarpon Spring’s 25,000 strong population live along its shores.

Traditionally a sponge diving community, Tarpon Springs was first populated by immigrants from the Greek Dodecannese islands including the Greek-born mayor who moved to Florida with his sponge diver father from Kalymnos island at the age of 14.

A statement from Greece’s presidential palace said the country’s head of state would be in “constant contact” and wished the community strength during the ordeal that lay ahead.

Updated

Hurricane Irma is edging closer to Key West and continues to have maximum sustained winds of 130mph.

Updated

SUMMARY

What we know so far

Havana flooded and tourists evacuated in Cuba

Irma left a trail of destruction in Cuba after passing over the north coast of the Caribbean nation on Saturday night and Sunday morning. The capital, Havana, was flooded by surging sea water and the storm raked resorts built in recent years on the north coast, forcing the evacuation of 5,000 tourists.

Thousands of residents were also evacuated by soldiers, with many taken to government shelters and schools.

Read our full report here.

Irma upgraded back to category 4 storm

The US national hurricane centre has said that Irma is now back to a category 4 strength storm.

It is about 70 miles (115km) south-south-east of Key West with maximum sustained winds of 130mph (210kmh).

AP has published a useful explainer of the phrase storm surge.

The storm surge is called dangerous and life-threatening, but what exactly is it?

It’s not a wall of water or a tsunami. Simply put, hurricane winds push water toward shore. It can happen quickly and far from a storm’s centre, inundating areas that don’t typically flood.

Storm surge doesn’t just come from the ocean. It can come from sounds, bays and lakes, sometimes well inland.

Large hurricanes tend to create greater storm surge over a broader area, and coastal features such as bays can act like funnels and back water up into rivers and canals, said Jamie Rhome, head of the US National Hurricane Center’s storm surge unit.

“This is going to sneak up on people,” Rhome said.

Updated

Associated Press reports on animals affected by Hurricane Irma.

Mo the Sloth and Kramer the Emu are as innocent as they come, but they’re doing time in a county jail in Florida.

So are plenty of horses, pigs, goats, sheep, tropical birds, alligators, snakes, turtles and other species the sheriff’s office cares for at a farm for abandoned, abused, confiscated or donated animals.

Once the 426 humans who normally occupy cells at the Monroe County jail were evacuated by bus to lockups in Palm Beach County, there was an opportunity to move 250 animals indoors, rather than leave them exposed to Hurricane Irma’s storm surge, rains and wind.

After all, hurricane preparedness wasn’t just about protecting humans and buildings. All over Florida, from zoos to refuges to shelters, getting animals ready for the storm was a top priority as well.

In Miami zoo, Jennifer Nelson walks a cheetah to a shelter before the downfall of Hurricane Irma.
In Miami zoo, Jennifer Nelson walks a cheetah to a shelter before the downfall of Hurricane Irma. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

Sheryl and Rick Estes take shelter from Hurricane Irma inside the Germain Arena in Estero, Florida.
Sheryl and Rick Estes take shelter from Hurricane Irma inside the Germain Arena in Estero, Florida. Photograph: Reuters

The National Hurricane Center says Irma’s projected path is continuing to shift to the west, just by a few crucial miles, which should keep its eye just off Florida’s west coast on a track to hit St Petersburg, not Miami or Tampa.

The hurricane’s leading edge was already lashing the Florida Keys with hurricane force winds. If the centre of the storm keeps moving over warm Gulf of Mexico water, it may regain more strength before making landfall again.

St Petersburg, like Tampa, has not taken a head-on blow from a major hurricane in nearly a century. Clearwater would be next, and then the storm would finally go inland northwest of Ocala.

The storm currently has top sustained winds of 120mph (193kmh) and is moving northward at about 6mph (10kph).

Forecasters at the National Weather Service monitor Irma at the hurricane centre in Miami.
Forecasters at the National Weather Service monitor Irma at the hurricane centre in Miami. Photograph: Andy Newman/AP

An eerily empty street in downtown Miami before the arrival of Hurricane Irma.
An eerily empty street in downtown Miami before the arrival of Hurricane Irma. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Some very practical advice from a Florida sheriff.

Irma is expected to rip through Florida’s southern archipelago on Sunday morning as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Wind gusts near hurricane force began to batter the Florida Keys late on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said.

Amid urgent warnings from state officials to evacuate before it was too late, downtown Miami was all but abandoned on Saturday. Sheets of rain swept through the deserted city of 400,000 people, forming large puddles in empty streets that are usually filled with tour buses and taxis.

The wind sent a construction crane spinning on the roof of the Miami Worldcenter, a billion dollar project near the home of the Miami Heat basketball team and the city’s performing arts centre.

On Florida’s west coast, resident Charley Ball said he expected a storm surge to completely engulf the island of Sanibel where he lives.

“Just left the island and said goodbye to everything I own,” said Ball, 62.

From the State Department: As Hurricane Irma moves through the Caribbean, President Trump has issued emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico. A major disaster declaration has also been issued for the US Virgin Islands. A hurricane warning is in effect for central and southern Florida and the Florida Keys.

Updated

The window for people in evacuation zones to flee was drawing to a close on Saturday, officials said, warning that gas stations would soon be without fuel and bridges would be closed in some areas.

Police cars caught in a traffic jam as people leave Miami before Hurricane Irma makes landfall.
Police cars caught in a traffic jam as people leave Miami before Hurricane Irma makes landfall. Photograph: Michele Eve Sandberg/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Officials in Florida have ordered a total of 6.3 million people, or about a third of the state’s population, to evacuate, creating massive traffic jams on highways and overcrowding shelters.

In Palm Beach, President Donald Trump’s waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was under evacuation order.

In Cuba, the destruction along the north central coast was similar to that suffered by other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma plowed into Ciego de Avila province.

Cubans walked through ankle-deep water in Caibarien, a fishing town where streets were flooded and covered in seaweed. Elsewhere, winds toppled trees and utility polls or ripped apart roofs.

It was the first time the eye of a Category 5 storm had made landfall in Cuba since 1932, state media said, and the island’s Communist government ordered the evacuation of more than a million people from its path.

There is an update on the power supply situation. A total of 9 million people in Florida may lose power, some for weeks, according to the Florida Power & Light Co.

Catastrophe modelling firm AIR Worldwide said Irma could cause insurance losses of between $15 billion and $50 billion in the United States.

Life threatening storm surge

The National Hurricane Center has issued an alert saying: Life threatening storm surge expected in the Florida Keys and the west coast of Florida.

Updated

Some of those who have fled Florida are very pessimistic about what they will be returning to once Hurricane Irma subsides. Tom Durr, a 66-year-old retired physician and his wife, Lorraine, fled their house in Englewood, between Fort Myers and Sarasota near where the eye of the hurricane is forecast to makes landfall.

The left for a small farm they own in North Carolina on Tuesday, but Durr told Reuters he does not expect much to be left when they return.

“It will be a nice waterfront lot in sunny Florida with no house, no trees, no cars, no boats and an amazing view of devastation as far as you can see,” he said.

The US National Weather Service says the first hurricane-force wind gust has been recorded in the Florida Keys as Irma inches closer to the state.

The weather service says the Smith Shoal Light station recorded a 74mph (119kmh) wind gust on Saturday night.

The centre of Irma is headed toward the Keys and has sustained winds of 120mph (193.11kmh).

Florida Governor Rick Scott says at least 76,000 people are without power as Irma unleashes winds and rain on the state.

Scott said on Saturday night that the number of outages is expected to grow as Irma moves closer to the state.

He warned people the storm is life-threatening.

Associated Press reports: Prime Minister William Marlin of St Maarten says about 1,600 tourists who were in the Dutch Caribbean territory have been evacuated and efforts are being made to move 1,200 more.

Marlin says many nations and people have offered help to St Maarten, but weather conditions will determine how this can be coordinated.

Authorities are still trying to determine the extent of damage to the island, but he said 28 police officers lost homes during Hurricanes Irma and Jose.

The prime minister said St Maarten remains under curfew and looting that took place immediately after the storm has subsided.

Updated

Winds near hurricane force in Florida, says USNHC

The US national hurricane centre says wind gusts “near hurricane strength” have been recorded in the Florida Keys as Irma moves closer to the state.

Marathon reported a wind gust of 71mph (114kmh) and sustained winds of 51mph (82kmh). Irma is about 105 miles (170km) southeast of Key West. It has winds of 125 mph (200kmh).

Hurricane Irma uprooted trees and tore off roofs in Cuba on Saturday with 125mph (200kmh) winds that damaged hotels in the island’s best-known beach resorts and forced evacuations as far along the coast as low-lying areas of the capital Havana.

Power was out and mobile phone service was spotty in many regions as Irma neared the end of a 200 mile (320km) trek westwards along the top of the island. It was forecast to head north towards Florida in the evening.

In the fishing town of Caibarien, residents swept mud from beachside homes after a storm surge drove a metre of seawater up the shore. In streets carpeted with fresh green seaweed as the water receded, people said it was the strongest cyclone ever to hit the town.

“Sheets of zinc that came flying into our backyard also damaged the kitchen wall and we lost many roof tiles,” said Angel Coya, 52, adding he was optimistic that Cuba’s communist government would help repair the damage. “We have to keep on.”

Irma’s turn northward was expected to occur around 150 miles (240km) east of the capital. Nevertheless, authorities shut off power in large parts of the city and evacuated around 10,000 people from central Havana near the Malecon seawall because of fears of flooding from the storm surge.

By Saturday evening, the sea had penetrated two blocks over parts of the city’s historic seafront boulevard, and the waters were expected to advance further as the surge grew. Restaurants on the seaside drive pulled down their shutters and stacked sandbags.

Still, many Cubans expressed a sense of relief after the eye of the first Category 5 storm to make landfall on the island since 1932 passed over the northern keys, just grazing the mainland with its full force.

“Honestly, I expected worse. I thought I would come back and find the roof gone,” said Yolexis Domingo, 39, using a machete to hack the branches off a tree that fell in front of his house in Caibarien. “Still, it is going to be a while before I can come back to live here. The water came up to a metre high and some of the roof flew off.”

Irma clears Cuban coast

The centre of Hurricane Irma has now cleared the Cuban coast and entered the Florida Straits, where bathtub-warm water of nearly 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) will enable the storm to intensify.

Irma had fallen to a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds, but National Hurricane Centre spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen says it’s already showing signs at high altitudes of regaining its previous powerhouse strength.

And because this storm is more than 350 miles (563km) wide, the Miami area is not in the clear just because Irma’s eye is shifting to the west.

Forecasts say Irma will maintain hurricane strength well into Georgia on Monday.

The latest advisories, just issued by the US National Hurricane Centre contain no changes from the earlier ones, with all existing warnings remaining in place.

Jose has sparked tropical storm warnings for the islands of Saint Martin and Saint Bathelemy.

Hurricane Irma is continuing to spark the following warnings:

  • Storm surge warnings for the South Santee River around the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys and Tampa Bay.
  • Hurricane warnings for the Florida peninsula, Florida Keys, Lake Okeechobee and Florida Bay.
  • Continued hurricane warnings for Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara, Matanzas, and Havana.
  • And hurricane warnings for Andros Island, Bimini, and Grand Bahama.

The National Hurricane Centre reminds people that a Hurricane Warning means: “Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion.”

And it gives the following explanation of the storm surge warnings:

“A Storm Surge Warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline, during the next 36 hours in the indicated locations. For a depiction of areas at risk, please see the National Weather Service Storm Surge Watch/Warning Graphic, available at hurricanes.gov. This is a life-threatening situation. Persons located within these areas should take all necessary actions to protect life and property from rising water and the potential for other dangerous conditions. Promptly follow evacuation and other instructions from local officials.”

Updated

Islands in the Caribbean already devestated by hurricane Irma are now facing impacts from hurricane Jose.

Although Jose is weaker, and moving away from the Islands, strong winds are likely to hit Peurto Rico and possibly The Dominican Republic as early as Sunday morning local time.

As we’ve reported, the threat of further tropical-storm-force winds is hampering aid efforts after Irma, and with debris scattered from earlier damage, additional strong winds could be more dangerous than they would otherwise be.

The next big threat for those of us sheltering from Hurricane Irma in South Florida is a tornado.

My mobile phone has been screaming its high-pitched alarm every 10 minutes over the last hour or so with dire warnings from the National Weather Serviceto take cover NOW because of tornadic thunderstorms in the area.

Local TV reports a tornado hit the ground in nearby Plantation within the last quarter-hour, and most of northern Broward County is under a tornado warning for at least the next 30 minutes.

It’s a scary time. Shelter for us consist of four of us, including my two sons aged 10 and 8, squeezing into a 5ft x 5ft interior closet with no windows, away from exterior walls and doors. My youngest has his teddy bear and some chicken nuggets for comfort.

The fact a tornado has actually struck nearby, instead of there just being the possibility of one, is sobering. It’s likely to be a long night in the closet with the kids.

The threat of tornados comes from thunderstorms in Hurricane Irma’s violent outer bands, which have been circling over Miami-Dade and Broward counties for most of the day as the storm moves ever closer.

There is likely to be plenty more to come in the next 24 hours.

Trump on Irma: "Just get out of its way"

Donald Trump has told people still in Hurricane Irma’s path to “just get out of its way” and not worry about possessions.

The president was monitoring the storm’s advance on Florida – where he has his Mar-a-Lago estate – from the secluded Camp David presidential retreat near Washington.

“Property is replaceable but lives are not and safety has to come first,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting. “Don’t worry about it. Just get out of its way.”

Trump shared a brief video of his remarks at the meeting on Twitter.

He said the administration was monitoring the situation “around the clock” and was in “constant communications” with governors and other officials from the affected areas.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, pledging as he did after Hurricane Harvey that recovery and rebuilding will happen quickly.
Read more about what impact Irma could have on Trump’s estate here.

With night quickly approaching in Florida, the liveblog has been handed over to me and the team in Sydney, Australia, who will keep you updated for the next several hours.

As Florida braces itself for the full impact of hurrricane Irma, Cuba is reeling from its effects after the eye of the first Category 5 storm to make landfall on the island since 1932 passed over, just grazing the mainland with its full force.

News agencies are reporting the hurricane uprooted trees and tore off roofs in Cuba on Saturday with 125-mile-per-hour (200-km per hour) winds that damaged hotels in the island’s best-known beach resorts and forced evacuations as far along the coast as low-lying areas of the capital Havana.

Power was out and cellphone service was spotty in many regions as Irma neared the end of a 200-mile (320-km) trek westwards along the top of the island. It was forecast to head north toward Florida in the evening.

Authorities shut off power in large parts of Havana and evacuated some 10,000 people from central Havana near the famous Malecon seawall because of fears of flooding from the storm surge.

By Saturday evening, the sea had penetrated two blocks over parts of the city’s historic seafront boulevard, and the waters were expected to advance farther as the surge grew.

Reuters reported that many Cubans expressed a sense of relief after it hit.

“Honestly, I expected worse. I thought I would come back and find the roof gone,” Yolexis Domingo, 39 told Reuters. “Still, it is going to be a while before I can come back to live here. The water came up to a meter high and some of the roof flew off.”

What we know so far

  • Hurricane Irma turned north toward Florida after crashing across Cuba’s north coast, wrecking towns with 125mph winds and surging waves. As of 6pm local time, the storm was about 120 miles away from Florida and expected to regain category four intensity.
  • Huge waves started to crash onto the Florida Keys, where the storm is expected to make landfall early Sunday morning. Winds of about 50mph were detected at a reef at the Keys, and authorities pleaded with people who did not heed evacuation orders to get to shelters.
  • More than seven million people were ordered to flee from their homes in several states, including nearly a third of Florida’s population. More than 50,000 people are in about 300 shelters around the state, counties enacted curfews, and power providers already began to struggle with demand.
  • Florida prepared for what its governor called “the most catastrophic storm the state has ever seen”. Gusts of intense wind and rain swept into Miami, and tornado warnings were issued for most of the southern counties. Irma is forecast to make landfall on the Keys, then again near Cape Coral or Fort Myers, and then a third time near Tampa Bay on its path up Florida’s west coast.
  • In Florida’s south-west, officials expect storm surges as high as 15ft. “Fifteen feet is devastating and will cover your house,” governor Rick Scott said. “Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down. The storm surge will rush in and it could kill you.” Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Gimenez warned people of intense surges on parts of the south-east: waves taller than an average person and wind that can turn flower pots and trash cans into deadly projectiles.
  • Twenty-five people have been confirmed killed around the Caribbean, including 11 people on French St Martin and St Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, three on Puerto Rico, two on Dutch St Maarten, one person in Anguilla and a two year old in Barbuda.
  • Category-four hurricane Jose threatened landfall in the eastern Caribbean, complicating relief efforts for islands that have only just emerged from Irma’s winds. But the storms spared Barbuda, where the prime minister estimated 90% of buildings were destroyed by Irma a few days earlier.
  • Another storm, Katia, was downgraded to a tropical depression as it pushed onto land from Mexico’s Gulf coast. Two people were killed in a mudslide in Veracruz, according to the AP.

The governor says his greatest fear right now is that people will underestimate the storm surge, which is expected to be as much as 15ft in the Florida Keys and parts of the south-west coast.

He recalls a storm some years ago that brought six-foot storm surges into Naples, and the breathtaking speed of the water crashing into homes. He says it’s hard to describe “how fast the water moved in and how fast the water moved out”.

“That was six feet,” he says. “You just think about – how can anybody survive this stuff?

“I just want everybody to live.”

Scott emphasizes that the dangers don’t end even once the storm itself has passed: there will be downed, live power lines, dangerous roads, lack of power, and likely shortages.

“Everyone’s going to have to be patient, and it’s going to be hard to be patient. Everybody’s going to want to go home and see what happened.”

He says the state has been preparing aggressively for the aftermath – “try to get fuel back, try to get the power back, try to get the roads cleared, try to do everything” – but it’s impossible to know exactly what the disaster will do and where.

“This is going to be massive.”

Governor Scott: "this is your last chance"

The center of hurricane Irma will pass directly over the Florida Keys, governor Rick Scott says, at what’s likely one of his last updates before the storm grips Florida overnight and early Sunday morning.

“Millions of Floridians will see life-threatening winds beginning tonight,” he says, with the “significant threat of serious storm surge along the whole west coast of Florida.”

Tampa will see a surge of five to eight feet, and the Big Bend area three to six feet. Parts of Miami-Dade County will see surges of five to eight feet, mayor Carlos Gimenez said earlier on Saturday. “Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down,” Scott warns. “The storm surge could rush in and it could kill you.”

He stresses the sudden, brutal force of the surges: “When it happens the water just rushes in and rushes out.”

The Florida Keys will see up to 25in of rain, Scott says, while much of southern Florida will have as much as 18in. “This is clearly a life threatening situation.”

More than 6.5 million Floridians were told to flee to inland and northern shelters, he says, 70,000 of whom are at shelters.Thousands are already without power, though Scott says the state will work hard to restore it, and to concentrate on speedy recovery efforts after the storm’s 24-36-hour passage up the state.

Finally he pleads with people to get to shelters immediately: “if you’re in an area that was told to evacuate, you need to leave, now. This is your last chance to make a good decision.”

Updated

Jessica Glenza, reporting from St Petersburg, has spoken with evacuees from around the city and other areas of Florida’s west coast.

As the storm approached Tampa Bay, people on the western edge of the bay in Pinellas county “scrambled” to get ready for a hurricane likely to bring 110 mile per hoursustained winds to the low-lying county.

“We’ve been having press conferences two or three times a day trying to get people informed, to get them to evacuate,” said Pat Gerard, a county commissioner in Pinellas. “Of course they’re not doing it, but it’s just what they do.”

The last seriously destructive storm to hit Tampa Bay was in 1921, a category three hurricane that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called it the “forgotten nightmare”.

“Everybody’s scrambling around trying to get ready,” said Gerard. “We have 160,000 people in the first evacuation level, so we had to start to try to get people out.”

Around the county, many said they were making last minute preparations to for the storm. Putting plywood on windows; charging phones; stocking propane, gas, water and food.

Further south, those who had already evacuated said they were trying to adjust to their new reality.

George Rogner, a 58-year-old DJ, was evacuated to a nearby elementary school, bunked in a hallway with “lots” more people.

“Right now, the power’s on so we’re all charging up the phones and they have the hallways are air conditioned here thats where we’re at,” Rogner said. “You never what a storm is going to do, people are driving all over the state to get away from it and it just follows them.”

Updated

Puerto Rico, where US naval ships and supplies are en route to provide relief, is still struggling with massive power outages and, in some places, water shortages.

Thousands of people have already lost power in south Florida, with the eye of the storm still over 100 miles off the coast.

Gusts of intense wind and rain are intermittently whipping through Miami now, and waters rising all around the Florida Keys. The storm is expected to strengthen as it crosses the 120 miles or so from Cuba’s north coastline.

Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Giminez is giving a press conference. He says that officials consider a four to six foot storm surge to be life threatening, and expect surges within that range for parts of the county. The worst of the winds will be around 4am, he says, roughly in line with the worst winds at daybreak at the Florida Keys.

The storm he says is projected to grow to a category four by the time it reaches Florida, and urges people – if they’re still outside, or when they go outside after the storm – to take extreme care. “If you run across a downed power line, consider it hot. If you run across a downed [traffic light], please consider it a four way stop.”

Parts of Cuba have been turned to flooded and battered ruins, the AP reports, as Irma finally moves away from its northern coast.

Cuban coastal cities were clobbered by high winds from Irma that upended trees, toppled utility poles and scattered debris across streets. Roads were blocked, and witnesses said a provincial museum near the eye of the storm was in ruins.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba in addition to the more than 20 confirmed dead across the Caribbean, where the storm ravaged such lush resort islands as St. Martin, St. Barts, St. Thomas, Barbuda and Anguilla.

Video images from northern and eastern Cuba showed uprooted utility poles and signs, many downed trees and extensive damage to roofs.

Eastern Cuba, home to the island’s poor, rural population and a major sugarcane-growing area, faces a difficult recovery, with its economy in tatters even before the storm because of years of neglect and lack of investment.

Civil Defense official Gergorio Torres said authorities were trying to tally the extent of the damage, which appeared concentrated in banana-growing areas.

A second hurricane, category four Jose, is threatening some of those same islands in the eastern Caribbean. Others, including tiny, devastated Barbuda, were spared a second strike at the last minute as the storm passed.

On the Dutch side of St. Martin, an island divided between French and Dutch control, an estimated 70 percent of the homes were destroyed by Irma, according to the Dutch government. Officials said Jose was forecast to dump more rain on the island’s buildings, many of which lost their roofs to Irma.

As Irma rolled in, Cuban soldiers went through coastal towns to force people to evacuate, taking people to shelters at government buildings and schools and even caves.

With its 5pm advisory, the National Hurricane Center says that hurricane Irma’s eye is moving away off the coast of Cuba and toward the mainland United States.

The Florida Keys, where water is already rushing up onto land in some areas, should expect “major hurricane force winds” at daybreak. Irma is still about 120 miles south-east of the archipelago. There are already tornado warnings in many south Florida counties.

Storm surges are already pushing waters up onto land of the Florida Keys, with alarming video coming from local reporters in the path of hurricane Irma.

The hurricane is still over a hundred miles away, near the coast of Cuba. The Keys will be its first landfall after regaining strength, likely to a category four.

Oouter bands of Hurricane Irma arrive in Miami Beach, Florida.
Oouter bands of Hurricane Irma arrive in Miami Beach, Florida. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Flamingos take refuge in a shelter ahead of the hurricane.
Flamingos take refuge in a shelter ahead of the hurricane. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters
A surfer in the churning ocean at Miami Beach.
A surfer in the churning ocean at Miami Beach. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Winds are picking up dramatically in south Florida now, as hurricane Irma begins its progress to the north and west. Time is nearly run out for people to get inside or to shelters, and curfews are starting in many cities and counties of the south.

Two Miamis waited in dread for hurricane Irma, reports Ed Pilkington: the Miami of hardened hurricane glass, thickened walls, generators and raised foundations; and the Miami of coolers packed with food and water, just enough gas to fill the car.

One mother of all hurricanes, two very different experiences. In Liberty City, the African American neighborhood that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Moonlight, the chances of escaping Irma’s devastating wrath are all but non-existent. When almost half the residents are below the federal poverty level, generators and storm windows are not an option, let alone a few boards of plywood and a tank of gas.

Most people are taking advantage of the lack of a mandatory evacuation order in their area and staying put. But local organisers fear they are woefully unprepared.

“People in Liberty City are not ready for what’s coming,” said Valencia Gunder, a community activist helping to set up an emergency response center for those in distress that will open on Monday morning, in the wake of Irma. “They don’t have enough money to pay the rent, and then this happens.”

Hurricane Irma has turned north-west, its winds and rain starting to lash over south Florida. Some reporters are on the roads or in the Keys – something that authorities are pleading with people not to do as the storm nears – documenting the increasingly severe weather.

Thousands of people have already lost power around south Florida, Florida Power & Light has reported, with 6,500 in Broward County and several hundred in western counties.

The National Weather Service has posted its 4pm update on hurricane Irma, which is about 125 mils south-east of Key West. The storm is still a category three, with sustained winds of 125mph, its eye moving at about 9mph.

Conditions are getting bad in the Keys. At Molasses Reef, a marine, there are sustained winds of 49mph with a gust to 56mph. In Marathon, the NWS detected sustained winds of 41mph with a gust of 55mph.

Eleven of Miami-Dade’s 25 shelters are at capacity for people, and several shelters are full in Collier and Lee counties.

Meanwhile Florida Power & Light, south Florida’s primary provider, is still struggling to supply people as the winds intensify. According to the TC Palm’s Nicole Rodriguez, several hundred customers are already without power in Treasure Coast counties; earlier on Friday, tens of thousands of people in east coast counties lost power.

Hurricane Irma is still crawling its way along Cuba’s north coast en route to south-west Florida, where the Keys jut out directly in its path.

At the southernmost point of the island chain, people are defying the orders to get to shelter in order to take selfies with the crashing waves.

Florida’s emergency management department repeats the governor’s plea for healthcare assistance around the state: nurses needed.

Jessica Glenza, reporting from St Petersburg, on Florida’s Gulf coast, is with her father Mike – a Florida man for decades and witness to many disastrous storms.

As Hurricane Irma approaches south Florida, the forecasts for Tampa Bay are increasingly dire. And I’m helping my dad board up his house.

We’ve got scrap wood and a box of screws, four of us altogether including a couple friends helping cover the windows of his 1920s shotgun house.

It’s on some of the highest ground in St Petersburg, in one of the only non-evacuation zones, but it’s all relative. Pinellas county, where the city is located, is consistently named one of the locations most vulnerable to climate change related flooding.

“They just said that storm got upgraded to a category seven,” my dad, Mike Glenza, joked as he walked by surveying the available wood. He’s a disabled tow truck driver who lives with his girlfriend, her daughter, around five cats and three dogs.

Dad is a teller of tall tales but also a genuine survivor. Years after he said it happened, dad told me about a misty night he was working on the Skyway bridge between St Petersburg and Sarasota. He slipped on the metal flatbed of his tow truck and slid toward the water, grabbing a chain to keep from falling to his death.

He told me for the first time today, that it’s not the first time he’s survived a hurricane.

In 1969, he was in Gulfport, Mississippi when Hurricane Camille stuck, one of the most intense hurricanes to ever hit the American mainland. He was on a long haul semi-truck trip moving a household of furniture with his father. He was 12.

“We found a little place to stay because the roads were, well they were closing the roads so we had to pull over and find a place. We were on interstate 10 going west to San Diego.”

What was it like in the motel you stayed in?

“Dark, windy, loud, water coming in under the door.”

After the storm when they tried getting out the roads were blocked, covered with feet of sand.

“Some of those little cottages were picked up and moved a couple hundred feet. Boats stacked up. I never seen nothing like that - I was from Tennessee.”

“We eventually made it there, about four weeks later. We sat there a week, then another three or four days, then it took us six days to get out of the carnage toward Texas when it started clearing up.”

What does he think of Irma?

“Irmageddon … I’m hoping Irma goes west.”

Another St Petersburg resident boarding up his home and neighbors’.
Another St Petersburg resident boarding up his home and neighbors’. Photograph: Dirk Shadd/AP

Updated

Curfews are set to begin at various times this afternoon and evening in south Florida, as authorities try to get people inside before strong winds start turn debris into projectiles and rain becomes blinding.

Irma is still near the north coast of Cuba, moving about 9mph.

Irma will regain strength as it moves away from Cuba, with winds predicted of more than 110mph by the time it reaches the Florida Keys early Sunday.

The latest projections from the National Hurricane Center show the storm moving at about 9mph, with winds of 125mph, still over Cuba’s northern shore. The hurricane has not yet turned north back over warmer waters.

Irma’s current projected course shows the eye making landfall three times on Florida: first over the Lower Keys, where meteorologists expect devastating storm surges; then over Cape Coral or Fort Myers, in south-west Florida; and finally it is expected to come within range of Tampa Bay, the state’s third most populous city.

Richard Luscombe, reporting from Miami, where he’s met a couple whose future is tied up in a property directly in the path of hurricane Irma.

In Worthing, West Sussex, more than 4,500 miles away from where Hurricane Irma is churning away, Florida villa owners Rob and Sue Carter nervously click on every internet update and social media post they can find about the monster storm’s projected path and intensity.

Their three-bedroom house in Rotonda West, in southwest Florida, is the Carters’ retirement dream, rented out on Airbnb to help pay the bills until Sue retires from her work as an NHS nurse in a couple of years time and can spend more time there.

The villa, however, is in the direct path of Irma’s predicted 140mph winds, and also in the middle of a newly declared evacuation zone, which means there aren’t even neighbours to keep the couple updated on the fate of their property.

“It will be a few days at least until we know what’s happened,” Sue Carter said. “Hopefully the storm slows down or turns away, but we’re expecting anything from minor damage right up to where it’s no longer habitable and has to be rebuilt. It’s hard being so far away and not really knowing anything.”

The Carters take some comfort from the fact their villa - close to the unspoiled beaches and wildlife havens of Venice and Englewood - was built in 2006, two years after Hurricane Charley wrecked large areas of southwest Florida and prompted a tightening in construction codes. The villa has hurricane-resistant glass, a fortified roof and an elevation certificate, meaning it is less prone to flooding than other properties nearby.

But it has also never been tested by a storm of Irma’s magnitude. Evacuees from the Florida Keys seeking sanctuary checked in for only five hours on Friday before looking at Irma’s predicted path and deciding to swiftly move on.

“In a way I’m glad,” Mrs Carter said. “We felt a sort of responsibility for their safety. All we can do is sit and wait and hope for the best.

“The property and all our belongings, they can be replaced. It’s people’s lives that can’t.”

The Carters’ villa.
The Carters’ villa. Photograph: Richard Luscombe

In Miami, gusts of strong wind and rain are periodically slamming onto the buildings and streets, but the weather is far from uniform around south Florida as Irma lingers over Cuba.

In Boca Raton, about an hour to the north of the city, people are still on the beaches, testing the intensifying surf.

What we know so far

  • Hurricane Irma slowed to a category three storm as it crashed across Cuba’s northern coast, lashing towns with 125mph winds and flooding them with intense surges. As of midday local time, the storm was about 170 miles away from Florida, and expected to regain category four intensity.
  • More than seven million people were ordered to flee from their homes in several states, including nearly a third of Florida’s population. More than 50,000 people are in about 300 shelters around the state, counties enacted curfews, and power providers already began to struggle with demand.
  • Florida prepared for what its governor called “the most catastrophic storm the state has ever seen”. Irma is forecast to make landfall on the Florida Keys early Sunday morning and then to pummel south-west Florida on a 30-hour journey northward.
  • In Florida’s south-west, officials expect storm surges as high as 15ft. “Fifteen feet is devastating and will cover your house,” governor Rick Scott said. “Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down. The storm surge will rush in and it could kill you.” Large swaths of Florida were given tornado warnings, and the National Weather Service’s Key West station delivered a dire warning: “THIS IS AS REAL AS IT GETS. NOWHERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS WILL BE SAFE.”
  • Twenty-five people have been confirmed killed around the Caribbean, including 11 people on French St Martin and St Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, three on Puerto Rico, two on Dutch St Maarten, one person in Anguilla and a two year old in Barbuda.
  • Category-four hurricane Jose threatened landfall in the eastern Caribbean, complicating relief efforts for islands that have only just emerged from Irma’s winds. On Barbuda, where the prime minister estimated 90% of buildings were destroyed, a mandatory evacuation moved people to the larger sister island of Antigua.
  • Another storm, Katia, was downgraded to a tropical depression as it pushed onto land from Mexico’s Gulf coast. Two people were killed in a mudslide in Veracruz, according to the AP.

Florida governor Rick Scott, repeating his warnings as much as possible on television and in person to residents, says hurricane Irma will eclipse hurricane Andrew, the devastating 1992 storm, as the most frightening storm in the state’s history.

Jessica Glenza, reporting from her childhood home of St Petersburg – now in Irma’s path on the Gulf coast – writes that south Florida’s grocery stores are nearly as barren as the roads and city blocks.

At the grocery store shelves are bare of the essentials - bleach, soup, beans, bread.

Ice deliveries were announced on the loud speaker - with a two bag maximum per person. Cases of water were also limited to two per person.

As I checked out, a manager went around to cashiers and handed them a letter - “this will get you through any roadblocks or anything”, because they were all on call.

Publix would close in just an hour, and some workers still had to evacuate, some said.

In carts, everyone has water, nearly everyone has beer. Phones alarmed - “woo-woo-woo” - continuously with weather warnings

Cuba is suffering the worst of hurricane Irma’s winds and rain right now, as the category three storm tracks its way across land along the coast. In Miami, intermittent gusts and rainfall have given away for the moment, with the storm still over 150 miles to the south.

Irma is expected to regain strength as it heads northward, with a projected course along Florida’s west coast.

Scott: 15ft surge predicted, six million told to flee

Florida governor Rick Scott is giving another update, now with an increasingly dire forecast for the south-west coast and Tampa.

He warns that in some places storm surges could be 15ft above ground level. “Think about that. Fifteen feet is devastating and will cover your house,” he says. In Tampa, the storm surge is forecast to be five to eight feet. “The typical first story is seven to nine feet. That is a life threatening situation.”

“Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down,” he continues. “Local officials will let you know when it’s safe. The storm surge could rush in and it could kill you.”

He pleads again with people not to take any chances, especially in evacuation zones or people who live in vulnerable mobile homes. “If you have been ordered to evacuate from anywhere in the state, you need to leave right now.”

So far 6.3 million Floridians – nearly a third of the state’s population – have been ordered to leave their homes to escape the full force of the storm.

“Do not put your life or your family’s life at risk. Right now is the right time to do the right thing for your family.”

Florida officials have asked another 700,000 to leave ahead of Hurricane Irma, the AP reports, meaning that nearly seven million Americans across several states have been ordered to evacuate.

The extraordinary evacuation is the largest in many counties’ histories, and involves a mass exodus from on of the nation’s most populous states. Miami enacted a curfew from 6pm to 9am; Broward county from 4pm until Saturday morning.

Updated

The National Weather Service is now predicting 10-20in of rain, with 20-25in in the Florida Keys and other particularly vulnerable regions.

The storm will bring “life-threatening winds” all around Florida, the agency says, “regardless of the exact track of the center”. The wind hazards will reach as far north as Georgia and South Carolina over the next day. In the southernmost points of the state, stations are bracing for the worst case scenarios.

Hurricane Irma has lost some of its force as its winds break across Cuba’s northern coast, but the island is bearing the brunt of that. Towns there have been hit by gigantic storm surges.

The National Weather Service predicts that south-west Florida’s coastline will see similar surges, possibly with flooding as high as 10-15ft.

More than 50,000 people have gone to about 300 shelters around Florida, state emergency management officials have said, from about 5.6 million people told to leave their homes in coastal stretches.

The AP reports that the Florida Keys evacuated about 460 inmates and 125 corrections officers from a jail on Stock Island, toward the bottom of the archipelago that lies in Irma’s path.

And although the storm remains about 175 miles away from the mainland, about 30,000 people in south Florida have already lost power.

Irma becomes category three storm

The National Weather Service has downgraded hurricane Irma to a cateogry three storm, with maximum sustained winds of 125mph as it hammers into Cuba’s northern coastline.

But the storm is expected to regain power as a category four as it moves away from the island and into the warm waters near south Florida and the Keys.

Local NBC reporter Amanda Plasencia is in Homestead, in Miami-Dade county just north of the Florida Keys, where the rains have already become a torrent.

Updated

South of Naples, Florida, on the state’s Gulf coast, the Tampa Bay Times’s Zack Sampson tweets that the outer bands of rain have reached the beaches.

The storm’s outer bands of rain reached southern Miami earlier on Saturday morning. The National Weather Service there reports “gusty showers” of 45-55mph, with the possibility of funnel clouds.

Broward County, just north of Miami-Dade and south of Palm Beach counties, has just announced a 4pm curfew to get people inside. Authorities have repeatedly said they would not be able to help people once the storm begins.

Updated

Scott: evacuate south-west zones before noon

Hurricane Irma is “going to go faster than you are”, Florida governor Rick Scott has warned residents, telling them that people in evacuation zones in the south-west should head to inland shelters immediately.

Storm surges in parts of Florida could be as extreme as 12ft, Scott warned: “This will cover your house.”

Some 25,000 people have already lost electricity as Irma’s outer bands have begun to swipe across the Keys and southernmost stretches of the peninsula. Parts of south-eastern Florida will likely hear tornado warnings over the next 24 hours as the storm tacks toward the Gulf coast.

In Miami, the winds are already mounting.

Updated

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At one of the final updates before the storm strikes the US mainland, Rick Scott, the Florida governor, has urged residents to make their final moves to shelters or to protect their homes.

“I urge everyone to talk to your neighbors, your family and friends,” Scott said. “Every Floridian should take this seriously and be aggressive to protect your family. … Your positions can be replaced, your life cannot be replaced, your family cannot be replaced.”

More than 260 shelters were open around the state, he added, and 70 more would open over the course of the day. “Everyone in Florida needs to find a safe place to go,” he said.

Traffic was moving on evacuation routes, though there was still congestion in some areas, he said. “Evacuations are not meant to be convenient – they’re meant to be safe. If you don’t need to be on the road, don’t be on the road.” Residents can go to FL511.com for updates on traffic and evacuation routes.

Scott urged people to act now, before the storm paralyzes authorities and civilians alike.
“We can’t do it once the storm starts.” He said the state was working “aggressively to keep gas stations open and filled,” but that the state’s ports were already closed and supplies would be cut off within hours.

Every available Florida guardsman has been deployed, he said, guiding people to shelters and preparing for the aftermath of the storm. “We are under a state of emergency. Healthcare staff, we need you to be there to help your community.”

Finally, Scott made a plea for more volunteers. He said: “We need 1,000 volunteer nurses for special-needs shelters.” He said nurses could visit FLHealth.gov for more information about how to help.

Vehicles move north on the Florida Turnpike from the Keys and Miami.
Vehicles move north on the Florida Turnpike from the Keys and Miami. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

Updated

As Irma continues apace throughout the Caribbean, women, children and the most vulnerable in Saint-Martin are the first to flee the island as hurricane Jose approaches.

TOPSHOT - A man walks on a street covered in debris after hurricane Irma hurricane passed on the French island of Saint-Martin, near Marigot on September 8, 2017. Officials on the island of Guadeloupe, where French aid efforts are being coordinated, suspended boat crossings to the hardest-hit territories of St Martin and St Barts where 11 people have died. Two days after Hurricane Irma swept over the eastern Caribbean, killing at least 17 people and devastating thousands of homes, some islands braced for a second battering from Hurricane Jose this weekend. / AFP PHOTO / Martin BUREAUMARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images
A street covered in debris after hurricane Irma hurricane passed over the French island of Saint-Martin. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

Jose has been classed as a category-4 storm, which makes it “extremely dangerous”.

Agence France-Presse has reported that the Grand-Case airport, on the French-run side, is the only way off the island and the departure hall now resembles a children’s ward in a hospital.

The tiny airport, with its single short runway, is grotesquely ill-equipped to evacuate the island’s 40,000-plus population. Therefore only the most vulnerable groups are allowed to enter the airport.

Updated

The Florida attorney general has announced that there have been 8,000 complaints following reports that airlines applied surge pricing – or price gouging – after the hurricane precipitated extreme demand.

“This is the time to help our neighbors, not take advantage of them,” declared Governor Rick Scott yesterday.

Would-be fliers have complained that prices skyrocketed as the week went on. However, some airlines have since applied price caps.

On CNN, experts are arguing whether price gouging is appropriate during emergencies in what is clearly an issue that exposes the faultlines between libertarians and social democrats.

Updated

Florida governor urges people to leave or find shelter "right now"

Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, is speaking at a press conference now.

If you have been ordered to be evacuated, leave now. Not tonight, right now.

Once the storm hits, remember law enforcement can’t safe you ...

We will do everything we can, but we can’t do it once the storm starts.

He also urged people to “aggressively” protect their families.

More to follow.

Britons in the path of Hurricane Irma are being warned the “situation could deteriorate significantly” as it bears down on the US mainland.

The foreign and commonwealth office has said its ability to provide assistance may be “extremely limited” and advised those affected to make their own contingency plans.

The historic storm regained its category five status overnight before dropping back to category four on Saturday after leaving more than 20 people dead across the Caribbean.

More than six million people in Florida and Georgia have been warned to leave their homes as the hurricane continues to batter the north coast of Cuba.

Prime minister Theresa May said work was taking place with US authorities to ensure British expats and tourists in Florida are protected as millions of locals and visitors flee to safety.

But the latest travel advice issued by the government states:

Across the United States, it is important that you follow the advice of the local authorities, including any evacuation orders.

The situation could deteriorate significantly. Our ability to provide assistance may be extremely limited.

You should ensure you have your own contingency plans in place and consider your travel plans very carefully.

Aid and expertise is being provided to Britain’s territories in the region in a 32 million government cash injection.

Engineers, marines and medics are being carried on board RFA Mounts Bay, which delivered six tonnes of supplies to Anguilla and carried out repair work before moving on to the British Virgin Islands.

Those on Caribbean islands braced for a second battering, this time from Hurricane Jose, were told the storm has weakened slightly.

But forecasters warned it was still a “dangerous” category four hurricane, which is expected to come close to the devastated northern Leeward Islands on Saturday.

A hurricane warning for the Commonwealth island of Barbuda and the British territory of Anguilla has been downgraded to a tropical storm warning, while Antigua and the British Virgin Islands are on tropical storm watch.

Life-threatening wind, rain and a storm surge are expected in the Turks and Caicos Islands, another British territory, into Saturday, after it was “pummelled” by Irma on Thursday night.

The foreign office has set up a hotline for people affected by the disaster and for people whose loved ones may be affected, on 020 7008 0000.

Updated

Hurricane Jose is set to make landfall in the eastern Caribbean islands already ravaged by Hurricane Irma.

Richard Branson has published an update on the situation in the British Virgin Islands before the new storm hits.

He said:

Governments – the UK in the British Virgin Islands, the US in the US Virgin Islands – need to do all they can to help people here who have lost their homes and in many cases will have lost their livelihoods after the storm.

Man-made climate change is contributing to increasingly strong hurricanes causing unprecedented damage. The whole world should be scrambling to get on top of the climate change issue before it is too late – for this generation, let alone the generations to come.

We are hopeful Hurricane Jose will not hit the BVI as hard as Hurricane Irma did, but urging everyone to get prepared and helping with supplies where we can.

Updated

My colleague Ed Pilkington is in Miami and has this update on the atmosphere as Hurricane Irma heads towards Florida:

Amid the relentless news of devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Irma, millions of Floridians bracing for one of the strongest storms to hit the US mainland this century will clutch at any good news, and they got some this morning.

In the 8am advisory from the National Hurricane Center, which is being watched here in South Florida with almost biblical zeal, the weather experts told us that the hurricane’s winds had slowed from about 155mph to 130mph as a little of its terrifying energy was soaked up by the landmass on the coast of Cuba.

The hope that the weather analysts gave with one hand, they took away with the other, however. “Irma is forecast to restrengthen once it moves away from Cuba,” the advisory goes on to say, “and Irma is expected to remain a powerful hurricane as it approaches Florida.”

That spells certain catastrophe now for the Florida Keys, which is expected to be struck by Irma very early on Sunday morning. Thousands of people have already left the Keys, though as the Miami Herald is reporting some die-hards are clinging on which seems rash bearing in mind the threat of a storm surge of up to 10ft.

It also spells trouble for the west coast of Florida where Irma is continuing to target given a slight westward veer in the past 24 hours. The impact could reach as far north as Tampa Bay, which hasn’t experienced a major hurricane since 1921.

Irma is now 215 miles south of Miami and moving north at a speed of 12mph. In Miami the first power outages – of 26,000 homes – have been reported, but hopes are rising that some of the worst of the damage may be avoided as the strife swings towards the west coast.

Nonetheless, the streets of the city were virtually empty on Saturday morning, and all petrol stations, supermarkets and other commercial outlets were closed. The city of 6 million people is now in a stunned state of foreboding, waiting to find out what nature has in store for the fourth-largest urban area.

Updated

The Cuban dolphins aren’t the only animals to be evacuated thanks to Hurricane Irma.

These roosters are being taken to safety in Florida, wrapped in newspaper jackets or “burritos” to avoid any squabbles on the car journey.

Meanwhile, staff at Ernest Hemingway’s home, which is now a museum, are defying the evacuation order, in the hope of safeguarding the property and its famous six-toed cats.

The 19th-century Hemingway Home Museum in Key West has been boarded up, with the storm heading straight for it.

Staff of the Hemingway Home Museum with some of the cats.
Staff of the Hemingway Home Museum with some of the cats. Photograph: Hemingway Home Museum via Facebook

The museum’s 54 cats, who are all descendants of the late author’s own cats, will be looked after by 10 members of staff.

Updated

The Guardian has spoken to Joe Farrar from Manchester, who is on holiday in Varadero, Cuba with his girlfriend, Helen. He says he was meant to leave Cuba on Friday, but Thomas Cook delayed his flight. He says Canadian tourists had been evacuated from the resort complex, but British tourists have been left at the hotel.

Hurricane Irma is set to hit the peninsula tonight.

Farrar told the Guardian:

We’re a bit scared. We’ve been left in limbo. They told us that they’ll turn off the power when the storm hits. If it gets really bad, we have to get in the bathroom.

The hotel staff have been brilliant to us. We are alright, but there’s a couple here who need medication and they’re running out. I’m sure we will be fine – we have crisps.

He posted this video on Twitter:

Thomas Cook have released travel advice for Varadero, and say they are monitoring the situation on the ground.

Updated

Hurricane Irma begins lashing Florida

The window for Florida residents to safely evacuate narrowed on Saturday as strong winds and outer rain bands hit the southern part of the state on a predicted path for landfall southwest of the heavily populated Miami metro area.

Hurricane Irma is currently moving along the coast of Cuba about 215 miles away from Miami, as it makes its way towards the US peninsula.

Florida Begins Preparing For Hurricane IrmaMIAMI, FL - SEPTEMBER 09: The skyline is seen as the outerbands of Hurricane Irma start to reach Florida on September 9, 2017 in Miami, Florida. Florida is in the path of the Hurricane which may come ashore at category 4. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Miami, early on Saturday morning. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Forecasters expect the storm to pick strength back up as it moves away from Cuba adter it weakened to a category 4 level storm.

The National Weather Service said damaging winds were moving into areas including Key Biscayne and Coral Gables on Saturday morning, while gusts of up to 56 mph (90 kph) were reported on Virginia Key off Miami.

Forecasters adjusted the storm’s potential track more toward the west coast of Florida, away from the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people, meaning “a less costly, a less deadly storm,” University of Miami researcher Brian McNoldy said.

Nevertheless, forecasters warned that its hurricane-force winds were so wide they could reach from coast to coast, testing the nation’s third-largest state, which has undergone rapid development and more stringent hurricane-proof building codes in the last decade or so.

“This is a storm that will kill you if you don’t get out of the way,” National Hurricane Center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said. “Everybody’s going to feel this one.”

In one of the country’s largest evacuations, about 5.6 million people in Florida more than one-quarter of the state’s population were ordered to leave, and another 540,000 were ordered out on the Georgia coast. Authorities opened hundreds of shelters for people who did not leave. Hotels as far away as Atlanta filled up with evacuees.

Parts of Florida are already experiencing power outages, according to reports on social media.

Some shelters are already at full capacity and others are filling fast. Perry Stein, a reporter for the Washington Post is in west Miami dade, which is beginning to feel the affects of the hurricane.

The UK government has pledged to double any public donations made to the British Red Cross appeal for victims of Hurricane Irma.

For every £1 given towards the relief effort in the Caribbean, another £1 will be added through the department for international development’s aid match scheme, up to £3m.

Donations will support people through the region, including in the badly hit British Overseas Territories of Anguilla, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos.

Priti Patel, secretary of state for international development, says:

Today we are announcing we will double any public donations which are made to the British Red Cross appeal through DFID’s Aid Match scheme.

The overwhelming generosity of the UK public in times of crisis is one of the things that makes Britain truly great.

This will help get water, food, shelter and power to those left devastated by Hurricane Irma.

This donation is on top of the £32m already pledged by the government.‎

Mike Adamson, chief executive of British Red Cross, says:

We would like to thank DFID for supporting our Hurricane Irma appeal, raising urgent funds for those affected by this devastating disaster. The most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic has left major destruction in its wake.

Red Cross teams are on the ground now supporting people in shelters, providing first aid and doing whatever they can to help.

The pledge came after Patel visited her department’s disaster response centre in Kemble, Gloucestershire on Friday.

About 10,000 UK aid buckets and 5,000 UK solar lanterns were being prepared at the centre while she was there and it is hoped they would reach those in need in the next few days.

Patel also pledged on Friday to double the number of humanitarian experts in the region from four to eight, who are now working in the field across several islands to assess need. Further advisors are expected to arrive in the coming days.

Updated

South Florida is experiencing "damaging winds" as Irma approaches

Meteorologists have reported that damaging winds are blowing into South Florida as Hurricane Irma continues its menacing approach on the US mainland.

The National Weather Service say that damaging winds are moving into areas including Key Biscayne, Coral Gables and South Miami.

Gusts of up to 56 mph (90 kph) were reported on Virginia Key off Miami as the storm’s outer bands arrived. The centre of the storm was about 245 miles south-east of Miami early on Saturday as it raked the northern coast of Cuba.

Life-threatening storm surges of far greater speeds are likely to follow. CNN reports the storm could reach 140mph.

The latest forecast track predicts the centre of the storm will move along Florida’s Gulf Coast throughout Monday.

Updated

The British Army and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary are delivering aid to those affected by Hurricane Irma.

Pictures released on Twitter show soldiers passing supplies along a chain and shelter kits, water and medical supplies being loaded onto a helicopter.

The UK government has also pledged to double any public donations to the British Red Cross’ public appeal, the charity announced on Saturday.

The efforts follow criticism of Theresa May on Friday for the government’s lacklustre response to the natural disaster.

The chairs of the UK’s foreign affairs and development select committees have asked the government to explain its response to Hurricane Irma, which has been widely deemed as inadequate.

“Experts and many in the area have been critical of the overall level of relief currently on offer as well as the apparent lack of forward-thinking once the storm’s route to Florida became more than just a possibility,” Tom Tugendhat and Stephen Twigg wrote.

On Friday following a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee, May said:

I heard directly from our consul general in Miami about the support that is being given to British nationals living in Florida and also British tourists in Florida.

We are, of course, working with the US authorities to ensure that every support is available and everything can be done before Hurricane Irma reaches Florida.

Updated

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have released an updated advisory on US travel saying that its ability to assist British people in Florida may be limited and anyone there should follow advice from local authorities.

It is unknown how many Brits are currently in Florida, a popular holiday destination for families and older people.

The statement said:

Across the United States it is important that you follow the advice of the local authorities, including any evacuation orders. The situation could deteriorate significantly. Our ability to provide assistance may be extremely limited. You should ensure you have your own contingency plans in place and consider your travel plans very carefully.

Cuba prides itself on hurricane preparations, and Irma is no different. Over 1 million Cubans were evacuated before the storm, according to local media. Even dolphins have been transported to safety.

Six dolphins were transported by helicopter from a dophinarium in Cayo Guillermo island in the north of Cuba to protective swimming pools in Cienfuegos on Thursday.

Updated

Lunchtime summary

Here’s a summary of what we know so far if you are just joining me.

  • Hurricane Irma, has dipped down to category-4 intensity, is still heading towards Florida after making landfall in Cuba.
  • Irma is forecast to hit the Florida Keys on Sunday morning, moving over south-west Florida by Sunday afternoon, then crossing the entire state over approximately 30 hours of ferocious winds and rains.
  • On Saturday, Irma continues to bash the north coast of Cuba, where it first hit the Camaguey archipelago on Friday night. With the sun rising, the full extent of the damage will soon become clear.
  • Florida has ordered 5.6 million people – a quarter of the state’s population – to evacuate, saying that those who do not leave cannot expect rescue services to reach them once Irma hits. A curfew comes into effect in Palm Beach from 3pm local time on Saturday.
  • Saturday will also see tropical storm-force winds lash Florida, ahead of Irma’s arrival. Outer rain bands have already reached the peninsula.
  • At least 23 people have been confirmed killed in the Caribbean so far. The first victim of Irma was two-year-old Carl Junior Francis in Barbuda. Eleven died on French St Martin and St Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, three on Puerto Rico, two on Dutch St Maarten and one in Anguilla. A teenage surfer died off Barbados in waves churned up by Irma, and four deaths were reported on the British Virgin Islands that have yet to be corroborated.
  • Clear-up efforts on Caribbean islands – to which Britain, France and the Netherlands have sent support – have been hampered by the approaching Hurricane Jose.
  • Jose is forecast to hit islands already ravaged by Irma – including Barbuda, Anguilla, St Maarten, St Martin and St Barthélemy – from Saturday. Hurricane Jose, currently a category 4, is “almost category 5”, the US National Hurricane Center has said.
  • But Katia – formerly a category-1 hurricane as it made landfall in Mexico – has been downgraded to a tropical storm.

Updated

Frozen star Josh Gad has described his co-star Kristen Bell as “an angel sent from above” after she helped his family who were caught up in Hurricane Irma.

Gad, who voices snowman Olaf in the animated hit, said Bell arranged for a hotel room for his parents when they were stranded in Florida as the US state braced for the storm to hit.

He shared a picture of Bell, who voices Princess Anna in the film, with his parents on both Instagram and Twitter.

On Instagram he captioned it:

So @kristenanniebell literally saved my parents and my entire family tonight from hurricane irma.

When they were stranded in Florida, she got them a hotel room at her hotel in Orlando and saved them, my brothers, my sister-in-law and niece and nephew.

They don’t make them like this girl. Thank you Kristen. You are truly an angel sent from above.

Bell previously said she had been moved by the community spirit she witnessed as she prepared to hunker down in Orlando to wait out the hurricane.

She shared a photograph of herself at the supermarket stocking up on food and bottled water:

Updated

Where would American disasters be without fake news circulating online? Hoax articles about Hurricane Irma are being pumped out by hastily created sites but, luckily, Snopes – a leading fact-checking site – has been assiduously debunking their false truths.

One viral message claimed that the 2005 movie Category 7: The End of the World predicted the arrival of hurricanes named Harvey and Irma. However, according to Snopes, none of the storms or hurricanes in the movie are called Harvey or Irma.

“Atlantic hurricanes are named from a prescribed list of names that are rotated every six years and published in advance,” wrote Dan McGill. “So we already know the list of potential hurricane names for 2018, 2019, and every year for the foreseeable future, unless they are changed by the World Meteorological Association.”

Elsewhere, an aerial image of the hurricane accompanied by a news ticker purporting that the storm had airlifted several sharks went viral after someone created it on BreakYourOwnNews.com.

Some of those who shared the post are likely to have been duped and Snopes confirmed that the hurricane is not, in fact, a sharknado.

Updated

A British man and his family are “lucky to be alive” after they survived Hurricane Irma.

Brendan Joyce, his wife Sasha, her father and their children sheltered in his father-in-law’s house as the storm tore across Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.

Undated family handout photo of husband and wife, Brendan and wife Sasha Joyce and their children Keiran and Aiden, after they survived being in the eye wall of Hurricane Irma.
Brendan and wife Sasha Joyce and their children Keiran and Aiden. Photograph: Family Handout/PA

The adults lay on top of the children, aged two and four, to protect them as the winds battered the house. When they emerged, the other rooms had been swept away, with only the room they had sheltered in surviving.

His sister Frances Joyce, from Glasgow, has spoken to him and said he is devastated by what has happened and worried for the future.

She said:

The first time he phoned, he phoned me in tears and said, ‘we’re alive, there’s nothing else.’ He is really worried about food and shelter, and worried about how it’s going to pan out. They have two little boys as well, so they are trying to keep them calm.

Back in Scotland we’re devastated as a family. We feel so helpless as we can’t do anything for them, they’re away over there. It’s amazing that they are alive.

Joyce, 44, from Glasgow, has lived on the island for more than 10 years and works as a marina manager at Nanny Cay. His wife Sasha, 34, is from the island and his children Keiran, four, and Aiden, two, were born there.

Sasha’s cousin Clare Parker, who lives in London, said:

My aunt and uncle have lived in the British Virgin Islands for nearly 50 years and have survived many, many hurricanes, but they realised that this was a hugely significant one and took all the precautions. They shuttered up and took shelter in a back bedroom that’s the most secure.

They were all in that room with the adults lying on top of the small children. When they came out, the eyewall of the tornado had ripped the concrete house apart.

They walked out of there alive, which is miraculous and we are so grateful for it. They are feeling lucky to be alive.

She said more aid was vital to help the people on the islands, with food and generators among the things needed.

Updated

Here’s more details on Hurricane Irma weakening to category 4 and the status on the other hurricanes in the area.

Associated Press reports:

The National Hurricane Center says Irma has weakened slightly to a category-4 hurricane, as it moves over the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba.

Irma had briefly regained category-5 strength late on Friday, but now has maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (249 kph). The hurricane is about 245 miles from Miami and moving about 12 mph toward the west-northwest.

In the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose is a category-4 hurricane, about 190 miles east-southeast of the Northern Leeward Islands, moving toward the islands at 13 mph with winds reaching 150 mph.

In the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katia made landfall late on Friday north of Tecolutla, Mexico and weakened to a tropical storm. By early Saturday morning it was 135 miles south of Tampico, Mexico, moving sluggishly at only 2 mph near the Sierra Madre mountains with maximum winds of 40 mph. It was expected to weaken further throughout the day.

Updated

Universal Studios Florida has joined Disney World, Legoland and SeaWorld by shutting its doors as Irma heads for Florida.

A statement from the theme park said they would close at 7pm UTC on Saturday. The statement continued:

We will be fully closed on Sunday and Monday and we anticipate normal operating hours on Tuesday, Sept. 12. Our on-site hotels are currently at full capacity and will remain operational as they focus on taking care of our on-sire guests.

Sam Branson, son of Virgin billionaire Richard Branson, says he is heading to help those devastated by Hurricane Irma on the British Virgin Islands, where his family owns an island.

The Branson family was caught up in the hurricane and took refuge in the wine cellar under their house on Necker Island.

“Going to be harrowing to see my home and so many others beloved place so decimated but will do all I can to get aid to the people that need it most,” he says on a video posted to Instagram.

He has appealed on the popular social media platform for others to come help. “If you have boats, then please get them to the BVI,” he says.

George W Bush’s presidency never fully recovered from his botched handling of Hurricane Katrina. Barack Obama won re-election just days after Hurricane Sandy struck. So how can presidents respond effectively to natural disasters? And how has Donald Trump managed the response to Harvey and Irma?

A history of hurricanes: how US presidents have responded

President Trump’s “reckless” attitude to climate change is being shown to be folly as Hurricane Irma tears towards Florida, a major charity has said.

Miami, in the south of the state, topped the list of most vulnerable cities to climate change induced coastal flooding, in a report produced by Christian Aid last year.

Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s international climate lead, said on Saturday morning:

We’re starting to see what happens when climate breakdown occurs on a global scale. As well as Hurricane Irma we currently have two other hurricanes in the west Atlantic, Jose and Katia, not to mention the destruction from Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

While we’re seeing the richest country on earth struggling to cope with the devastation of extreme weather, don’t forget the 40 million people affected by floods in South Asia, an area without anywhere near the same infrastructure or resources to cope.

Trump’s promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and undoing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is the exact opposite of what we need to see in the face of this lethal reality.

As seas get warmer, providing more energy to tropical storms, the people of Florida and the Caribbean will continue to suffer until leaders like Trump start to reduce the carbon emissions which drive climate change.

The city of Miami is particularly vulnerable with more than $3.5 trillion of assets at risk from flooding by 2070. In its report, the charity showed American cities would face the financial brunt of coastal flooding by 2070 with New York coming third with $2.1 trillion.
Mr Adow added:

The cost of the reckless climate policies espoused by Donald Trump will be paid in the lives of people living in these places and the trillions of dollars lost in places like Miami and New York, not to mention the economic disruption and the money needed to rebuild cities suffering from floods and storm damage.

That is why if we don’t invest now in low carbon infrastructure to decarbonise our economies we will end up paying for it later.

Updated

Dutch marines have dropped flyers from a helicopter warning inhabitants on the devastated nation of St. Maarten to head to shelters as Hurricane Jose heads its way, following in Irma’s path.

Jose, a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds, was forecast to pass close to St. Maarten over the weekend, delivering a second damaging blow to the former Dutch colony that suffered catastrophic damage when Category 5 Hurricane Irma slammed into it on Wednesday.

Peter Jan de Vin, a Dutch military commander on the island of Curacao who is helping coordinate relief efforts on St. Maarten, tweeted a picture Saturday morning of a marine dropping flyers out of a helicopter flying low over one of St. Maarten’s shattered seafront neighborhoods.

Hurricane Irma has "weakened" to a category 4 storm

Hurricane Irma, which is passing over north Cuba, is now a category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 155 miles per hour, according to the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

However, it is still being described as “powerful and large”.

More to follow.

Some good news as Storm Katia – formerly a category one hurricane – rapidly weakened after it made landfall near the beach resort of Tecolutla in the state of Veracruz on the Mexican Gulf coast, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Katia was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm as it was about 110 miles (175 km) northwest of Veracruz, Mexico with sustained winds of 45 mph (70 kmh), the center said in an advisory.

Mexico is also dealing with the aftermath of a powerful earthquake on Thursday night. The quake, the strongest to strike the country in more than 80 years, killed at least 61 people.

More on that story here:

Patrick Oppmann, Cuba correspondent for CNN, is live tweeting his experiences as Irma gives Cuba “holy hell”.

Palm trees sway in the wind prior to the arrival of the Hurricane Irma in Caibarien, Cuba, September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Palm trees sway in the wind prior to the arrival of the Hurricane Irma in Caibarien, Cuba. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

He said:

Irma giving Cuba holy hell right now; winds do not let up.

Water is half way up the 1st floor of house I am in. We should be fine, many others will not.

Pitch dark and the wind screaming. What a night.

Cat 5 Irma battering Cuba right now, watching waves roll down street I walked yesterday.

Flood waters surround house me and my team are in & going up. Will be here for a while.

With Hurricane Jose gaining in strength and hot on the heels of Irma – which left 90% of the island of Barbuda devastated – almost all of its population of around 1,400 people has been evacuated to the larger sister island of Antigua.

Only a few people “resisted the call” to evacuate.

Hurricane Jose has “almost” reached category five strength, with top winds of 155 mph (250kmh) as it heads towards the eastern Caribbean islands ravaged by Hurricane Irma.

Florida Prepares For Major Hit By Hurricane IrmaCARIBBEAN SEA - SEPTEMBER 8: In this NASA/NOAA handout image, NOAA’s GOES satellite shows Hurricane Irma (C) in the Caribbean Sea, Tropical Storm Jose (R) in the Atlantic Ocean and Tropical Storm Katia in the Gulf of Mexico taken at 15:45 UTC on September 08, 2017. Hurricane Irma barreled through the Turks and Caicos Islands as a category 4 storm en route to a destructive encounter with Florida this weekend. (Photo by NASA/NOAA GOES Project via Getty Images)
Hurricane Jose, right, follows closely behind Hurricane Irma, centre, with Hurricane Katia to the left. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

Jose was about 240 miles (390km) east-southeast of the northern Leeward Islands on Saturday morning and was forecast to hit the outlying Caribbean islands later in the day.

The US national hurricane centre said that “air force hurricane hunters find Jose even stronger ... almost a category 5 hurricane”.

It issued hurricane warnings for the eastern Caribbean islands of Barbuda and Anguilla, Sint Maarten, St Martin and St Barthelemy. A hurricane watch was in effect for Antigua, while tropical storm watch was is in effect for Montserrat, St Kitts, and Nevis, British Virgin Islands, and St Thomas and St John.

More on that story here:

Matt Taylor, a broadcast meteorologist for the BBC, has commented on the language used in a tweet from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Key West, Florida, which urged people to evacuate.

The tweet said: “THIS IS AS REAL AS IT GETS... NOWHERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS WILL BE SAFE ... YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO EVACUATE”.

Taylor has tweeted that meteorologists normally use reserved language so when you see this issued you know it’s the “real deal”.

Barbuda victim named as Carl Junior Francis

This is Nicola Slawson in the UK taking over from Claire. I’ll be keeping you up to date throughout the day on Hurricane Irma.

The first victim of Irma was two-year-old Carl Junior Francis, Associated Press reports:

On Barbuda, a coral island rising a mere 125ft (38m) above sea level, authorities ordered an evacuation of all 1,400 people to neighbouring Antigua, where Stevet Jeremiah was reunited with one son and made plans to bury another.

Jeremiah, who sells lobster and crab to tourists, was huddled in her wooden home on Barbuda early Wednesday with her partner and their two- and four-year-old boys as Irma ripped open their metal roof and sent the ocean surging into the house.

Her younger son, Carl Junior Francis, was swept away. Neighbours found his body after sunrise.

“Two years old. He just turned two, the 17th, last month. Just turned two,” she repeated.

Her first task, she said, would be to organise his funeral. “That’s all I can do. There is nothing else I can do.”

Florida forecast

The weather service for Florida’s Tampa Bay has issued a stark warning of the expected impact of Irma as it sweeps across the state.

The hurricane is forecast to hit the Florida Keys from Sunday morning and move north across the state – but tropical storm-force winds are expected from Saturday morning, within hours. Wind speeds are already elevated and the outer rain bands of the hurricane have brushed the east Florida coast.

The NWS Tampa Bay statement warns:

Irma is a large and broad hurricane, so regardless of the exact track of the centre of the storm, there will be impacts felt across the peninsula.

It is expected to turn north towards south-west Florida later today [Saturday], brining hurricane-force winds to much of the local area Sunday afternoon through early Monday. Hurricane-force wind gusts will likely be experienced across the entire peninsula through early Monday …

Storm surge flooding is expected across much of the Florida Gulf coast.

Heavy rainfall will spread northward beginning late Saturday and continuing through early Monday. The heaviest rainfall is expected north and east of the centre of the storm, where local amounts may exceed 15 inches (38cm) in some areas!

Inland flooding and storm surge combined account for the most deaths when it comes to hurricanes.

Finally we can expect a few tornadoes within the hurricane’s outer rain bands beginning later today and lasting into Sunday night.

Updated

What we know so far

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of Hurricane Irma – now with Hurricane Jose on its heels.

Here are the latest updates:

  • Hurricane Irma, which briefly dipped to category four intensity, is now back up to category five and has made landfall in Cuba.
  • Irma is now forecast to hit the Florida Keys on Sunday morning, moving over south-west Florida by Sunday afternoon, then crossing the entire state over approximately 30 hours of ferocious winds and rains.
  • On Saturday, Irma continues to rake the north coast of Cuba, where it first hit the Camaguey archipelago on Friday night. It is the first category five storm to make landfall in Cuba for almost a century.
  • Saturday will also see tropical storm-force winds lash Florida, ahead of Irma’s arrival. Outer rain bands have already reached the peninsula.
  • Florida has ordered 5.6 million people – a quarter of the state’s population – to evacuate, warning that those who do not leave cannot expect rescue services to reach them once Irma hits. A curfew comes into effect in Palm Beach from 3pm on Saturday.
  • Florida governor Rick Scott warned on Friday:

If you are planning to leave and do not leave tonight, you will have to ride out this extremely dangerous storm at your own risk.

  • In Georgia, 540,000 people on the coast received mandatory evacuation orders.
  • The Bahamas meteorological office said the main island of New Providence had been spared the worst as Irma passed close by, but the southern Bahamas had been more badly hit.
  • At least 23 people have been confirmed killed in the Caribbean so far. The first victim of Irma was two-year-old Carl Junior Francis in Barbuda. Eleven died on French St Martin and St Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, three on Puerto Rico, two on Dutch St Maarten and one in Anguilla. A teenage surfer died off Barbados in waves churned up by Irma, and four deaths were reported on the British Virgin Islands that have yet to be corroborated.
  • Clear-up efforts on Caribbean islands – to which Britain, France and the Netherlands have sent support – have been hampered by the approaching Hurricane Jose.
  • Jose is forecast to hit islands already ravaged by Irma – including Barbuda, Anguilla, St Maarten, St Martin and St Barthélemy – from Saturday. Hurricane Jose, currently a category four, is “almost category five”, the US National Hurricane Center has said.
  • But Katia – formerly a category one hurricane as it made landfall in Mexico – has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
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