Hurricane Irma has strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 5 storm[1], the National Hurricane Center said, as the storm threatened to slam into northeastern Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico by Wednesday before possibly taking aim at the US mainland.

Irma was churning Tuesday morning in the Atlantic about 270 miles east of Antigua and Barbuda, heading west with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph -- well above the 157-mph threshold for a Category 5, the strongest classification.

It is still too early to tell the exact impact Irma will have on the United States.

Computer models show the system eventually heading toward Cuba and possibly turning north toward Florida by the weekend.

Track the storm here.[2]

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[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/us/hurricane-irma-puerto-rico-florida/index.html
[2] http://www.cnn.com/interactive/storm-tracker/
[3] http://cnn.it/EmailFooter-TV
[4] http://cnn.it/EmailFooter-Web
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[6] http://cnn.it/EmailFooter-go


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