Irma Smashes Turks And Caicos; Category 4 Storm On Its Way To Florida
Irma is predicted to bring a storm surge of 5 to 10 feet to a large swath of the Florida peninsula. The storm has 150-mph sustained winds and is expected to pass Cuba on Friday.
Updated at 12:01 p.m. ET
Hurricane Irma slammed through the Turks and Caicos Islands en route to a destructive encounter with Florida this weekend. It began hitting Cuba and the Bahamas with hurricane conditions Friday morning. Although the storm has been downgraded slightly, it remains a massively powerful and "extremely dangerous" system, forecasters say.
Irma's dangerous "eye wall," where winds of 150-mph are swirling, is threading its way through the gap between Cuba and the Bahamas as it heads toward Florida. At 11 a.m. ET Friday, the storm was about 405 miles southeast of Miami and moving at 14 mph.
The extent of the damage to the low-lying Turks and Caicos island chain, located just east of the Bahamas, still isn't clear.
