Two other giant storms - Katia and Jose - have grown to hurricane levels, and now trail the calamitous Category 5 Hurricane Irma, which has battered the Caribbean and is headed toward the southern coast of Florida.
Katia, a Category 1 hurricane as of Wednesday evening, is in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Mexico late Friday or early Saturday.
The storm is forecast to produce up to 10 inches of rain, with the possibility of 15 inches in northern Veracruz, according to the National Hurricane Center.
"This rainfall may cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain," NHC said.
For comparison, Hurricane Harvey unloaded over 50 inches of rain east of Houston, Texas last week.
Houses and infrastructure on Barbuda have been "totally demolished," Antigua and Barbuda PM told media following a helicopter trip to the Caribbean island. The island of 1,600 residents went radio silent for over twelve hours, causing wild speculations over their fate.
Conflicting reports emerged in the vacuum of information and the absence of direct communication with the island. Some claimed that 1,000 people had died but this was quickly debunked, with calls for people to wait for official confirmation before retweeting carelessly and generating unnecessary panic and dismay.
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, has confirmed one fatality after making a roundtrip to the island on a helicopter.
"There has been a fatality. An infant died as a result of their mother trying to escape a damaged property. We are not too sure of the cause of death," Browne told local ABS news in an interview.
Browne said the scenes he witnessed on the island were "heart-wrenching."
"If I was a crying man, I would have cried," Browne told ABS. "[It was] one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in my entire life... Absolute devastation, this is no hyperbole."
A third hurricane is set to threaten the US in the space of six days.
Katia, a storm off the Mexican coast, has strengthened into a hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
It is 185 miles (295 km) east of Tampico, Mexico, and has maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kph).
In the next 48 hours some additional strengthening is also forecast, the NHC added.
Models so far show it remaining in the southern Gulf in the coming days.
The news comes as tropical storm Jose was upgraded to a hurricane in the Atlantic, far east of Hurricane Irma, which is currently heading towards Florida.
Comment: While climate scientists are now saying Harvey "should serve as a warning", they are not considering the importance of atmospheric dust loading and the winning Electric Universe model in their research. Such information and much more, are explained in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
The accumulation of cometary dust in the Earth's atmosphere plays an important role in the increase of tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes and their associated rainfalls, snowfalls and lightning. To understand this mechanism we must first take into account the electric nature of hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones, which are actually manifestations of the same electric phenomenon at different scales or levels of power.
Heavy rain and 185-mph winds lashed the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico's northeast coast Wednesday as Hurricane Irma roared through Caribbean islands on its way to a possible hit on South Florida.
The strongest Atlantic Ocean hurricane ever measured destroyed homes and flooded streets across a chain of small islands in the northern Caribbean, passing directly over Barbuda and leaving the island of some 1,700 people incommunicado.
France sent emergency food and water rations to the French islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, where Irma ripped off roofs and knocked out all electricity. Dutch marines who flew to three Dutch islands hammered by Irma reported extensive damage but no deaths or injuries.
While France received no immediate reports of casualties, the minister for French overseas territories, Annick Girardin, said: "We have a lot to fear for a certain number of our compatriots who unfortunately didn't want to listen to the protection measures and go to more secure sites ... We're preparing for the worst."
Kelly Mclaughlin Daily Mail Wed, 06 Sep 2017 20:24 UTC
Dramatic pictures have started to emerge on social media showing the scale of the flooding on St Martin
St Maarten's famous international airport, Princess Juliana, has been destroyed by Hurricane Irma.
The storm ripped through the airport on Wednesday, with 185mph winds blowing over safety fences and battering nearby Maho beach.
Huge rocks smashed into planes, and boarding walkways were slammed to the ground by the downpour of rain and gusts of wind, which also brought loads of sand on to the runway.
Inside the airport, which lies on the Dutch side of Saint Martin island, the check-in lounge was flooded and walkways were damaged by the storm.
Parts of the building had broken off during the storm and were seen lying on the runway after the storm passed.
Photos of the damage were documented by a hurricane rescue team, who went in after the storm passed.
Irma spun into a monster storm Tuesday morning with sustained winds topping 180 mph, becoming the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, National Hurricane Center forecasters said in their 11 a.m. advisory.
As the hurricane churns closer to the U.S. coast, its path becomes more certain, with South Florida, particularly the Keys, increasingly likely to take a hit. Tropical storm force winds could arrive as early as Friday. Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties and has all 7,000 members of the state's National Guard to report to duty on Friday.
Because Irma is so large, forecasters urged caution in paying too much attention to its exact track. The storm is continuing to roll west at 14 mph, with winds expected to begin battering the Leeward Islands today. A powerful high pressure ridge is steering the storm and will likely stay in place over the next few days, forecasters said. In five days, a trough moving across the U.S. should begin weakening the western edge of the ridge, allowing the storm to slide north. Where Irma makes the turn will determine impacts to Florida.
As many as 16 goats were killed in lightning at Koshala village under Chhendipada block here today.
According to reports, Anjulata Sahoo, wife of Bijay Kumar Sahoo of Bankataragadia village had taken the goats for grazing them near the house. At around 3 pm when rain started with lightning and thunder, she stood under a tree after keeping the goats under another tree.
The goats were killed in the lightning.
Despite MeT prediction about possibility of lightning and thunder in some of the districts every day, the casualties are still taking place in the state.
Amanda Batchelor local10.com Wed, 06 Sep 2017 16:13 UTC
Hurricane Irma leaves path of destruction in Guadeloupe
Hurricane Irma has caused serious damage to rooftops and knocked out all electricity on the French islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
France has requisitioned planes and sent in emergency food and water rations.
The regional authority for Guadeloupe and neighboring islands said in a statement Wednesday that the fire station in Saint Barthelemy is under more than 3 feet of water and no rescue vehicles can move.
They said the government headquarters in Saint Martin is partially destroyed and the island is in a total blackout.
Electricity is also partially down on the larger island of Guadeloupe, where the threat receded, despite the danger of heavy flooding.
Leeward Islands of Antigua and Barbuda braced for category 5 storm, which then heads for Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and Florida
The most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history bore down on the islands of the north-east Caribbean on Tuesday night local time, following a path predicted to then rake Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba before possibly heading for Florida over the weekend.
At the far north-eastern edge of the Caribbean, authorities on the Leeward Islands of Antigua and Barbuda cut power and urged residents to shelter indoors as they braced for Hurricane Irma's first contact with land early on Wednesday.
Officials warned people to seek protection from Irma's "onslaught" in a statement that closed with: "May God protect us all."
The category 5 storm had maximum sustained winds of 185mph (295kph) by early Tuesday evening, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
Hurricane Irma is continuing to strengthen as it moves through the Atlantic as a daunting Category 5 storm, now with 185 mph winds.
Irma has become one of the most powerful storms in history with the National Hurricane Center calling it "potentially catastrophic." It's tied with Hurricane Wilma as the second strongest storm that's formed in the Atlantic Ocean on record, both just behind Hurricane Allen in 1980, which had wind speeds of 190 mph.
Gov. Rick Scott activated the Florida Air and Army National Guard Tuesday morning, with 100 members called up immediately and all 7,000 members told to report for duty Friday morning. He also suspended all tolls starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The governor asked President Trump to declare a pre-landfall emergency for Florida, which would free up federal funding to help the state defend itself against the huge storm. Among possible emergency measures would be shoring up beach dunes, building emergency berms and planning for potential evacuations, according to a news release from the governor's office.
"Our state emergency management officials are working with our federal and local partners to prepare for any potential impacts from this dangerous storm," Scott said. "And it is crucial that we have access to every available resource to protect our families and communities."
The course of life and labour reminds me of a long journey I once took on the railway. Suddenly, there was a breakdown ahead, and passengers took the event in various ways. Some of them sat still resignedly, and never said a word. Others again, went to sleep. But some of us leaped out of that train, and ran on ahead to clear the road of all obstructions.
- Michael Collins
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Comment: While climate scientists are now saying Harvey "should serve as a warning", they are not considering the importance of atmospheric dust loading and the winning Electric Universe model in their research. Such information and much more, are explained in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Increasing cometary and volcanic dust loading of the atmosphere (one indicator is the intensification of noctilucent clouds we are witnessing) is accentuating electric charge build-up, whereby we can expect to observe more extreme weather and planetary upheaval as well as awesome light shows and other related mysterious phenomena.
See also: Study: Tornado outbreaks are increasing - but scientists don't understand why. A coauthor of this paper states "What's pushing this rise in extreme outbreaks is far from obvious in the present state of climate science."