With Irma, Jose and Katia, the Atlantic-Caribbean zone has three simultaneous hurricanes today, which has not happened since 2010, according to international meteorological entities.
With Irma, Jose and Katia, the Atlantic-Caribbean zone has three simultaneous hurricanes today, which has not happened since 2010, according to international meteorological entities.
While the first one is hitting on the Caribbean with winds of 295 kilometers per hour (km/h), the other two are at an alarming rate, as they passed from tropical storms to hurricanes in few hours.
According to the French Meteorological Service, Irma is a category 5 hurricane on the longest Saffir-Simpson scale ever recorded in the world.
With maximum sustained winds of 295 km/h for more than 33 hours, it broke the record of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which generated in the Philippines in 2013 the same winds but only for 24 hours, leaving more than 7,000 dead and missing.
Irma left at least eight people dead and 21 wounded after lashing the French-Dutch island of San Martin, France's aid services announced.
According to the president of the French part of San Martin, where about 70,000 people are living, about 95 percent of the territory was destroyed.
Irma left in Barbuda one dead and caused a total devastation, Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne said.
Irma is followed by Jose, with similar trajectory but for now with category one in the Saffir-Simpson scale, the Cuban Institute of Meteorology website posted.
The third hurricane is Katia, strengthened since yesterday during its passage on the Gulf of Mexico waters and threatens to intense rains in several states of that country, where the authorities have activated an alert system.
Katia is advancing slowly east-southeast at four km/h, but forecasts suggest that it could turn to the coast as it intensifies and touch Mexican soil before Saturday with category three.