The hurricane is not expected to make landfall, but meteorologists warned it would generate dangerous waves of up to 15 feet across the northern coast of Puerto Rico.
This Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Lee, right, off in the central tropical Atlantic Ocean. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hurricane Lee on Friday charged through warm Atlantic waters as the season’s first Category 5 storm, threatening to unleash heavy swells across the northeast Caribbean.
The hurricane is not expected to make landfall, but meteorologists warned it would generate dangerous waves of up to 15 feet across the northern coast of Puerto Rico and other nearby islands. While Lee is on a path that would take it a couple hundred miles northeast of the Caribbean, tropical storm conditions are not forecast for the region.“Although the hurricane is incredibly powerful, its wind field is not particularly large,” the National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane was located about 630 miles east of the northern Leeward Islands. It had winds of up to 165 miles per hour and was moving west-northwest at 14 mph . Lee is expected to keep strengthening and reach winds of up to 180 mph . Only seven Atlantic hurricanes have had winds of that magnitude since 1966, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Among those was Hurricane Dorian, which pummeled the northern Bahamas in 2019 as a Category 5 storm, hovering over small islands for some two days.
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