Irma is expected to remain a powerful hurricane through the weekend.
Hurricane Irma was holding steady Friday morning (Sept. 1) as a Category 3 storm in the Atlantic, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center said.
It’s unclear what impacts Irma might pose to land. Models are notoriously unreliable more than five days away, and Irma is not expected to near the Leeward Islands until sometime next week. The Leeward Islands are part of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea.
As of Friday morning, the storm was about 840 miles northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands and about 1,665 miles east of the Leeward Islands. It’s moving northwest at 12 mph. It’s expected to turn west again Friday night, followed by a turn to the west-southwest on Saturday.
Irma has maximum sustained winds of 115 mph with higher gusts. Fluctuations in strength, up or down, are possible during the next few days, but forecasters say Irma is expected to remain a powerful hurricane through the weekend. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 15 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 90 miles.
Carlie Kollath Wells is a morning reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Have an early-bird tip? Send it to her: cwells@nola.com or Twitter @carlie_kollath.
