Rico's rants: Yet more hurricanes

Three powerful storms are churning in the Atlantic, including Hurricane Jose, whose impact will be felt up and down the East Coast, especially in New England. Meanwhile, Hurricane Maria threatens Puerto Rico.

NBC has an article by Rachel Elbaum, Daniella Silva, Jason Cumming, and Corky Siemazzko about
what's coming:

Hurricane Maria was strengthening fast into a monster storm Monday as it barreled towards Martinique, Puerto Rico, and the other Irma-battered Caribbean islands. As of 1400 Eastern time, Maria had grown into a "rapidly intensifying" Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of over a hundred miles per hour, and was just forty-five miles east of Martinique, a French island home to some four hundred thousand people, the National Hurricane Center said. Maria could grow into a "major hurricane" overnight and begin threatening the Virgin Islands on Tuesday evening and Puerto Rico by Wednesday morning, the hurricane center said. Puerto Rico has not been hit by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane since 1928, said NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins.
Maria, however, could be "catastrophic" for Puerto Rico, which was largely spared by Hurricane Irma, Karins said. It passed fifty miles north of the island and caused only wave damage, but even that was enough to knock out power to around a million people.
"There's an excellent chance that Maria will be a major hurricane very close to Puerto Rico in 48 hours," he said, adding that it could also hit the Irma-devastated US and British Virgin Islands.
Hurricane watches and warnings were in effect for Puerto Rico and a string of islands reaching from St. Lucia north to the US and British Virgin Islands.
Tropical storm warnings and watches were also issued for Barbados, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, Martinique, and Antigua and Barbuda, among others.
"Maria is expected to produce total rain accumulations of six to twelve inches, with isolated maximum amounts of twenty inches across the central and southern Leeward Islands, including Puerto Rico and the US and British Virgin Islands, through Wednesday night," the hurricane center warned.
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló warned Sunday that the storm could bring more rain, wind and water than Irma, which killed three people there. Rosselló said nearly fifty thousand people, about 85 percent of customers in the metropolitan area of the capital, San Juan, remained without electricity. Another six thousand were still without drinking water.
Help was already on the way. A ship from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was expected to arrive early Tuesday with more than a million gallons of water and more than a hundred generators, and the island was ready to house over sixty thousand people in nearly five hundred shelters, Rosselló said. "The priority is to be prepared and save lives," he said.
In Condado, just east of historic old San Juan, Sonia Yanguas was appealing for help to the Almighty. "We're praying to God that it will weaken out at sea," said Yanguas, 76, who lives in a ninth-floor apartment by the sea. "I’ve already made the essential purchases, especially water. I have my equipment, I have a radio and batteries, all the things that are so important to making sure you don’t end up without a way to communicate."
But she's not sticking around for Maria. She's heading inland to the city of Miramar.
"I’m going to prepare my apartment right now, and then I’m going to a hotel," said Yanguas. "I’m going with my two sons and four grandchildren."
Ivelisse Rodriguez, who lives just south of San Juan in Guaynabo, said people were really frightened, with many lining up at gas stations trying to purchase fuel. "There's a collective hysteria," said Rodriguez, 42. After Irma, she said, "we were without power for six or seven days and without water for nine or ten." "Being without water was the worse than being without power," she said. "There’s thing’s you can do if you lose power, but there’s nothing that can substitute water.”
Irma killed four people and did "apocalyptic" damage in the US Virgin Islands. Will Tuttle, who flew down from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts to the island of St. John help his mother rebuild after Irma, said they're boarding everything up again for Maria.
"We covered the windows with plywood and are now putting up more plywood to reinforce them," Tuttle said. "We’ll throw everything from outside into the pool: lawn chairs, chaises. It sinks, it’s safe, it doesn’t go anywhere."
On St. Thomas, Omari Williams said everybody is heeding the call to get out of their houses. "People here are trying to get safe," he said. "Officials are encouraging more people to come to public shelters especially if their home is already compromised."
Farther south, on St. Croix, Lisa Mackay said they're ready for Maria and all they can do now is wait.
"There wasn't much we had to do for Maria because we did everything we had to do for Irma," said MacKay, who is from Memphis, Tennessee, but married to a man whose family has living on the island for generations. "We are seriously concerned about the storm. Our homes are well built, mine included. We have hurricane shutters we put up, but the reality is it’s an unknown."
In the British Virgin Islands, where Irma killed four, Governor Augustus Jaspert warned Maria could dump six to twenty inches of rain. He warned Maria's powerful winds could turn anything not battened down into projectiles.
Severin Pradel, who lives on Anguilla, said they're sick of storms. "People are frustrated and saying, 'Oh my god, I can’t believe it, we can’t take another one,'" he said. "If Maria comes then we’ll get beat up again and will have to start all over."

Carlisle John Baptiste and Danica Coto have an Associated Press article about the latest:

Hurricane Maria smashed into Dominica with 160 mph winds, ripping the roof off even the prime minister's residence, and causing what he called "mind-boggling" devastation Tuesday as it plunged into a Caribbean region already ravaged by Hurricane Irma.
The storm was on a track to wallop Puerto Rico on Wednesday "with a force and violence that we haven't seen for several generations," the territory's governor said.
Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said on his Facebook page that "initial reports are of widespread devastation", and said he feared there would be deaths due to rain-fed landslides. "So far the winds have swept away the roofs of almost every person I have spoken to or otherwise made contact with," Skerrit wrote. "The roof to my own official residence was among the first to go." And he appealed for international aid: "We will need help, my friend, we will need help of all kinds."
Maria's eye roared over the island late Monday night. The storm briefly dipped to Category 4 strength early Tuesday before regaining Category 5 status. Fierce winds and rain lashed mountainous Dominica for hours. A police official on the island, Inspector Pellam John Baptiste, said late Monday night that there were no immediate reports of casualties, but that it was too dangerous for officers to check conditions.
"Where we are, we can't move," he said in a brief phone interview while hunkered down against the region's second Category 5 hurricane this month.
"The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God," Skerrit wrote at the start of a series of increasingly harrowing posts on Facebook. A few minutes later, he messaged he could hear the sound of galvanized steel roofs tearing off houses on the small rugged island. He then wrote that he thought his home had been damaged, and added: Rough! Rough! Rough!
On the nearby island of Martinique, officials said about twenty-five thousand households were without electricity and two small towns without water after Maria roared past.
The head of French civil security, Jacques Witkowski, told reporters that it was too soon to say whether the French department of Guadaloupe had fared as well.
Prefect Eric Maire, the highest French official of Guadaloupe, said in a video on Twitter that some roads and homes were flooded and heavy rain expected to continue. He told the population to "remain inside".
Authorities in the American territory of Puerto Rico, which faced the possibility of a direct hit, warned that people in wooden or flimsy homes should find safe shelter before the storm's expected arrival there on Wednesday. "You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you're going to die," said Hector Pesquera, the island's public safety commissioner. "I don't know how to make this any clearer."
Maria had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph on Monday when it slammed into Dominica.
The National Hurricane Center said Maria weakened briefly before recovering sustained winds of 160 mph (260 kph). Its eye was located about 150 miles southeast of St. Croix on Monday morning and was moving west-northwest over the Caribbean at ten mph.
Forecasters warned Maria would remain a Category 4 or 5 storm until it moves over the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The storm's hurricane-force winds extended out about thirty-five miles and tropical storm-force winds out over a hundred miles.
Hurricane warnings were posted for the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat. A tropical storm warning was issued for Martinique, Antigua, Barbuda, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, and Anguilla.
Forecasters said storm surge could raise water levels by six to nine feet near the storm's center. The storm was predicted to bring ten to fifteen inches of rain across the islands, with more in isolated areas.
Close to its path is the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, where territorial Governor Kenneth Mapp said Tuesday would be "a very, very long night."
St. Thomas and St. John are still stunned from a direct hit by Hurricane Irma, which did extensive damage and caused four deaths on the two islands.
Barry University said it chartered a private plane to carry students and staff from its St. Croix facility to Florida in preparation for Maria. It said 72 people connected to the Barry's Physician Assistant Program and a few pets were on Monday's evacuation flight.
In neighboring Puerto Rico, nearly seventy thousand people were still without power following their earlier brush with Irma, and nearly two hundred remained in shelters as Maria approached.
Governor Ricardo Rossello said Puerto Rico had five hundred shelters capable of taking in over a hundred thousand people in a worst-case scenario. He also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was ready to bring drinking water and help restore power immediately after the storm, which could hit as a Category 5 hurricane.
"This is going to impact all of Puerto Rico with a force and violence that we haven't seen for several generations," he said. "We're going to lose a lot of infrastructure in Puerto Rico. We're going to have to rebuild."
Rossello warned that an island-wide power outage could last a "long time" given the power company's deteriorated and weak infrastructure.
To the north, Hurricane Jose stirred up dangerous surf and rip currents along the East Coast, though forecasters said the storm was unlikely to make landfall. Big waves caused by Jose swept five people off a coastal jetty in Rhode Island and they were hospitalized after being rescued. A tropical storm warning was posted for coastal areas in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and tropical storm watches were up for parts of New York State's Long Island and parts of Connecticut.
Jose's center was about 350 miles south-southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts early Tuesday and moving north at nine mph. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph.