Hurricane Maria Hits San Juan, Puerto Rico Is 100 Percent Without Electricity

Hurricane Maria hit San Juan, Puerto Rico, earlier this morning and is continuing to keep the island under her wrath this afternoon. As of 12:45 p.m. Eastern, the entire island was without power as Maria’s high winds took over.

Maria is currently 15 miles east southeast of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, traveling northwest at 12 mph. Although she has weakened some as she has gone over land, Maria has picked up speed and is still a very powerful, dangerous storm.

At the current time, San Juan, the largest city in the country, is still feeling impacts from this storm, but the worst is over for residents living there. The highest reported wind gusts in San Juan were 110 mph, but the wind has subsided a bit over the past couple of hours.

“The eyewall of Maria, while disrupted by the mountainous terrain, continues to carve through Puerto Rico, passing just south and west of San Juan, lashing the capital with eyewall winds.Winds are still gusting over 100 mph in parts of central and northern Puerto Rico, and gusts over 40 mph are still occurring in parts of the Virgin Islands,” The Weather Channel reports.

Below are some photos and videos taken in San Juan.

“This is total devastation. Puerto Rico, in terms of the infrastructure, will not be the same. … This is something of historic proportions,” Carlos Mercader, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s governor, told CNN on Wednesday.

Maria is still a Category 4 hurricane. She is expected to move completely out of Puerto Rico by this evening and will head north west toward Turks and Caicos. Her projected path suggests that she will then head out into the Atlantic, sparing the East Coast of the United States of her wrath. There is, however, some indications that she might interact with Hurricane Jose and that she could impact North Carolina over the next 7 to 10 days.