The hurricane weakened to a Category 3 after carving a path of destruction across Jamaica. Limited communications there have left officials with only partial reports as they seek to assess the scale of the damage.

Hurricane Irma, fresh on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, strengthened early Tuesday into a Category 5 storm with maximum winds of 175 miles per hour, as Florida started to prepare for its potential landfall over the weekend. The latest forecasts have Irma ...

The storm has grown to one of the Atlantic's strongest on record, and is threatening to be the Atlantic's first Category 5 landfall since 2019.

In the last 25 years, a total of 10 major hurricanes have lashed the island. “Cuba is right in the center of things,” a weather historian said.

A hurricane forms when warm, moist air rises from the ocean surface and creates a spinning system of clouds and storms. In the centre, air sinks, creating the eye, a calm, cloud-free zone surrounded by a wall of violent winds and rain known as the eye-wall.