BRIDGETOWN: Hurricane Maria picked up strength and roared towards the Leeward Islands on Monday on a track that could whip several eastern Caribbean islands with their second major storm this month.

Maria grew into a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with maximum sustained winds of 195 km per hour.

It was located about 95 km east of Martinique, the US National Hurricane Center said at 11am ET (1500 GMT).

It was headed west-northwest at about 10 17 kph on a track that would put it over the US territory of Puerto Rico by Wednesday.

Maria was expected to be the second major hurricane this year to hit the Leeward Islands, which were hammered by Hurricane Irma earlier this month, the center said.

Streets were flooded in some residential parts of the island of Barbados, which had been experiencing heavy rain since Sunday as the storm approached.

Maria was expected to bring storm surges — seawater driven ashore by wind — of up to 6 feet to 9 feet, the NHC said. Parts of the central and southern Leeward Islands could see as much as 20 inches of rain, it said.

Puerto Rico, a US territory which Irma grazed as it headed toward Cuba and Florida, opened shelters and began to dismantle construction cranes that could be vulnerable to high winds as it prepared for Maria.

More than 1,700 residents of Barbuda were evacuated to neighbouring Antigua after Irma damaged nearly every building there.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2017