Hurricane Maria plows into Dominica, heads for US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico
Ponce — Hurricane Maria, the second Category 5 storm to hit the Caribbean this month, plowed into the small island nation of Dominica on Monday with roof-ripping fury, on a collision course with the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico later this week. Hurricane Maria was upgraded on Monday evening to the top of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale when its maximum sustained winds reached 215km/h, with higher gusts, the US National Hurricane Center reported. Less than 90 minutes later, the centre of the storm, described by the NHC as "potentially catastrophic", passed almost directly over Dominica, on a track that would put it over Puerto Rico by Wednesday, according to the agency’s latest bulletins. There was no immediate word on the fate of Dominica, a former British colony home to 72,000 people that lies in the eastern Caribbean about halfway between the French islands of Guadeloupe, to the north, and Martinique, to the south. But Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said in a Facebook po...
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