Hurricane Irma continues to plot its destructive path towards Florida.
The hurricane – one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century – is now some 495 miles (795 km) southeast of Miami after soaking the northern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and pummelling the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The “extremely dangerous” hurricane has been downgraded from a Category Five to a Category Four early this morning, however, it still packs winds as strong as 155 miles per hour (250 km per hour), the National Hurricane Center cautioned.
Hurricane Irma is headed for the Bahamas, where it is expected to bring 20-foot storm surges, before moving to Cuba and slamming into southern Florida on Sunday.
In Miami, hundreds lined up for bottled water and cars looped around city blocks to get gas on Thursday.
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Gasoline shortages in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area worsened on Thursday, with sales up to five times the norm.
In Palm Beach, the waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate owned by US President Donald Trump was ordered evacuated, local media have reported.
President Trump also owns property on the French side of Saint Martin, an island devastated by the storm.
A mandatory evacuation on Georgia’s Atlantic coast was due to begin on Saturday, Governor Nathan Deal said.
Irma has ravaged a series of small islands in the northeast Caribbean, including Barbuda, Saint Martin and the British and US Virgin Islands, ripping down trees and flattening homes and hospitals.
There are a number of ways to track the progress of this devastating hurricane.
Express.co.uk has all the latest on the path of the storm through the Caribbean and towards Florida.
New York Public Radio WNYC is mapping the latest path for the Hurricane on a live map, which can be seen below.
There is a dropdown menu in the widget that lets users choose which weather system to track – Hurricane Irma, Tropical Storm Jose, Tropical Storm Katia.
Users can also see the previous locations of the storm, as well as the latest forecast.
Professional storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski is also hot on the heels of Hurricane Irma.
The storm chaser caused a stir online when he streamed Hurricane Harvey live from Rockport, Texas last week.
Piotrowski has shared a number of updates about Irma already.
The storm chaser is likely to broadcast from his Periscope page, which can be found here.
Those who are worried about Hurricane Irma’s progress can use a number of smartphone apps to keep up-to-date with the storm.
Hurricane by American Red Cross is a fully-featured app that lets users track the path of a hurricane with an interactive map.
It has a number of customisable alerts and lets users monitor hurricane, flood and tornado-related weather near you or loved-ones with various map layers and location-based notifications for the US and its territories.
There’s a nifty feature that quickly lets family and friends know you’re okay, thanks to the customisable “I’m Safe” alert for Facebook, Twitter, email and text.
The app, which is available on Android and iOS, includes step-by-step instructions let you know what to do even before, during and after the storm – even if you have lost mobile data and Wi-Fi.
Another option is Weather Underground, which is also available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
This differs slightly because it sources data from more than 250,000 personal weather stations report the most localised weather conditions.
According to the developers, this crowd-sourced data fills in the gaps between airport weather stations that other weather services typically relied upon to generate forecasts.
Users can also report hazardous road conditions, which could be extremely helpful in the aftermath of a storm.
Weather Underground’s app listing says, “If you see something different you can report the conditions you’re experiencing for the benefit of other app users.”