Hurricane Lee now ‘extremely dangerous’ Category 5 storm as it churns towards Caribbean – live

Hurricane Lee is expected to continue intensifying into Friday and it could attain wind speeds of 180mph or more in the next 12 hours, making it one of the strongest storms in the Atlantic.

Hotter ocean waters this year are contributing to rapid intensification of storms this year, experts have said. Water temperatures in this part of the Atlantic Ocean were record warm in August driven by man-made climate crisis.

In the Pacific, Hurricane Jova churned through open waters far from Mexico’s southwest coast as a Category 4 storm. It posed no threat to land.

It was located about 600miles (965km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja, California, and was moving west-northwest at 17mph (28kph) with winds up to 145mph (230kph). The storm was expected to start to weaken starting late on Thursday or early Friday.

While all eyes are on rapidly intensifying Hurricane Lee, another tropical storm has formed in the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center reported.

Tropical Storm Margot is expected to become a hurricane over the weekend, the NHC said,

The storm was spotted about 355 miles west of The Cabo Verde Islands with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. It was moving west-northwest at 16 mph.

Hurricane Lee is currently packing sustained winds of 160mph, making it a Category 5 tropical storm, which is set to intensify further to 180mph.

Lee is the first storm since Hurricane Ian last year to attain the Category 5 status and only 38 other Atlantic hurricanes have reached Category 5 intensity over the past 100 years.

Hurricane Lee is being termed “one of the fastest” if not the fastest-developing storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, as it went from Category 1 on Thursday morning to Category 5 by the day’s end.

The storm is expected to intensify further to reach wind speeds of 180mph by Friday morning.

Here’s how Lee’s rapid intensification played out:

• Lee was a Category 1 storm with 80 mph winds at 5am ET on Thursday. Within 12 hours, its maximum sustained winds had increased to 130 mph, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.
• By 11pm ET, the storm’s maximum sustained winds were 160 mph, making it now a Category 5 hurricane.
• The storm’s maximum sustained winds increased by just over 80 mph in 24 hours, according to the NHC. The escalation greatly exceeds the 35 mph increase needed to fit the definition of rapid intensification.

Hurricane Lee has gone through a rapid intensification in the Atlantic’s warm waters over the day on Thursday and is now a Category 5 storm with fears that it could grow even stronger.

This time-lapse from Cooperative Institute for Research in Atmosphere (CIRA) shows the 12 hour process, from sunrise to sunset, of Lee becoming Category 4 from Category 1.

Lee’s rapid strengthening into a Category 5 hurricane on Thursday has made it one of the “fastest intensifying Atlantic hurricanes ever observed”, experts said, as the National Hurricane Center warned the storm could intensify further by Friday morning.

“Hurricane #Lee has explosively intensified into a Category 5 storm and is expected to peak as a monster 180mph Cat 5,” Colin McCarthy, who tracks tropical storms, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Experts have warned that if Lee intensifies further and reaches 180mph speed, it would only be the ninth storm in the Atlantic to reach that level.

“If that happens, it would put Lee in an elite club, with 8 other storms reaching 180mph. 5 Atlantic hurricanes on record have had stronger winds,” meteorologist Jeff Berardelli wrote.

Hurricane Lee rapidly intensified to a Category 5 storm on Thursday night as it churned towards Caribbean islands with “life-threatening” conditions expected to develop in the coming days.

The National Hurricane Center said in its 11pm advisory that the storm could go through “further strengthening” overnight, which could make it one of the rarest hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Lee was located about 705 miles (1,135km) east of the northern Leeward Islands and packing maximum sustained winds of 160mph (260kph).

After three years of the cooler La Nina pattern, which often lowers global temperatures slightly, the WMO announced on Tuesday that El Nino conditions were present and are expected to gradually strengthen into the winter.

The last significant El Nino event occurred in 2016, which has gone down as the warmest year the world has seen since records began.

Its recurrence in 2023, when global heating driven by man-made carbon emissions has only accelerated, threatens a “double whammy”, according to the WMO, which has warned there is a 90 per cent probability of it lasting to the year’s end.

That means the likelihood of extreme weather events that could prove life-threatening has also increased, prompting the organisation’s officials to caution world governments that they must be prepared.

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration warned in August that this year’s season would produce an above-normal number of storms. Between 14 to 21 named storms are forecast. Of those, six to 11 could become hurricanes, with two to five of them possibly becoming major hurricanes, the agency said.

Meanwhile, AccuWeather updated its forecast, predicting there would be three to five hurricanes Category 3 or stronger this season, compared with one to three in its previous analysis.