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Hur­ri­cane Erin ex­plod­ed in strength to a Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm in the Caribbean on Sat­ur­day, rapid­ly pow­er­ing up from a trop­i­cal storm in a sin­gle day, the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said.

While the com­pact hur­ri­cane’s cen­ter wasn’t ex­pect­ed to strike land, it threat­ened to dump flood­ing rains on the north­east Caribbean as it con­tin­ued to grow larg­er.

The first At­lantic hur­ri­cane of 2025, Erin ramped up from a trop­i­cal storm to a Cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­cane in a mere 24 hours. By late Sat­ur­day morn­ing, its max­i­mum sus­tained winds more than dou­bled to 160 mph (255 kph).