MIAMI Hurricane Dorian has gained fearsome new muscle as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, bearing down on the northwestern Bahamas early Saturday en route to Floridas east coast.
MIAMI — Hurricane Dorian has gained fearsome new muscle as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm, bearing down on the northwestern Bahamas early Saturday en route to Florida’s east coast.
Millions of people in Florida, along with the state’s Walt Disney World and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, are in the potential crosshairs of the hurricane. Forecasters say Dorian, which had top sustained winds of 140 mph Friday night, will threaten the Florida peninsula late Monday or early Tuesday.
But the National Hurricane Center in Miami cautioned that its meteorologists remain uncertain whether Dorian would make a devastating direct strike on the state’s east coast or inflict a glancing blow. Some of the more reliable computer models predicted a late turn northward that would have Dorian hug the Florida coast.
“There is hope,” Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters said.
The faint hope of dodging Dorian’s fury came Friday, even as the storm ratcheted up from a menacing Category 3 hurricane to an even more dangerous Category 4. That raised fears Dorian could become the most powerful hurricane to hit Florida’s east coast in nearly 30 years.
National Hurricane Center projections showed Dorian hitting roughly near Fort Pierce, some 70 miles north of Mar-a-Lago, then running along the coastline as it moved north. But forecasters cautioned that the storm’s track remains still highly uncertain and even a small deviation could put Dorian offshore — or well inland.
Trump has declared a state of emergency in Florida and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster-relief efforts. He told reporters that “Mar-a-Lago can handle itself” and that he is more worried about Florida.
“This is big and is growing, and it still has some time to get worse,” Julio Vasquez said at a Miami fast-food joint. “No one knows what can really happen. This is serious.”
As Dorian closed in, Labor Day weekend plans were upended. Major airlines began allowing travelers to change their reservations without fees. The big cruise lines began rerouting their ships.
