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Article snippet: SAN JUAN, P.R. — Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms ever recorded, made landfall around 2 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, with the eye passing over Barbuda and heading toward Puerto Rico and other islands, the National Hurricane Center said. The hurricane center said that Irma, a Category 5 storm, had come ashore packing winds of up to 185 miles per hour as it approached the Leeward Islands, and that it had swiped Antigua. About 5 a.m., the center said the eye was moving away from Barbuda toward St. Martin. The storm is one of the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the center and to Bryan Norcross, a hurricane specialist at the Weather Channel. There have been, however, storms with comparable winds in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, where warm waters can fuel particularly dangerous hurricanes. Late Tuesday, wind gusts of around 50 miles per hour arrived in Antigua and Barbuda but picked up significant strength as the center of the storm swirled several dozen miles offshore. The authorities cut off power on those islands before midnight, forcing many residents to listen to the latest forecasts on transistor radios in the darkness. Residents throughout the Caribbean scrambled on Tuesday to rush out of possible flood zones, stock up on water, food and gas, shutter their homes and brace for what is now, and could remain, a Category 5 hurricane. On Antigua, many residents were spending the night in nearly 40 shelters beca... Link to the full article to read more