Hurricane Irma raged into the Caribbean this week as a Category 5 storm, taking at least nine lives so far, leaving a million Puerto Ricans without electricity, and reducing the island of Barbuda to rubble. And it’s not done yet; the storm is expected to strike Florida in a few days.
With winds reaching 185 miles per hour, Irma is the strongest storm that’s ever been recorded outside the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and it came awfully close to matching the fastest-ever hurricane speeds of 190 mph. Irma maintained those 185-mph winds for two days straight, a record-breaking length of time for an Atlantic storm, fueled by the water’s warmer-than-usual temperatures. Those stats caused some meteorologists to wonder whether Irma should be in an entirely new category of storm.
Read more at State of The Planet, news from the Earth Institute.
