Puerto Rico Under Hurricane Watch as Tropical Storm Dorian N
Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2019 5:26 pmKen Bredemeier and Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to recover from a 2017 storm, is under a hurricane watch as Tropical Storm Dorian makes its way toward the U.S. territory.
Forecasters expect Dorian to be near hurricane strength Wednesday night when it passes over western and central Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rican Governor Wanda Vazquez has declared a state of emergency, warning of possible landslides, flash floods, and power outages.
Thousands of homes still lack roofs and kilometers of roads are still a wreck from Hurricane Maria — the powerful storm that tore across Puerto Rico in 2017, devastating the island and killing as many as 3,000 people.
As of late Tuesday, Tropical Storm Dorian was about 130 kilometers west of Dominica with top sustained winds at 85 kilometers per hour.
The storm lashed the Windward Islands on Tuesday, dumping as much as 20 centimeters of rain on St. Lucia, Martinique, and St. Vincent.
Forecasters believe Dorian could threaten the U.S. mainland in Florida by the weekend as a minimal hurricane, packing winds of at least 112 kilometers per hour.