Hurricane Lee the season's first Category 5 storm charges through Atlantic toward northeast Caribbean

Hurricane Lee on Friday charged through warm Atlantic waters as the season's first Category 5 storm, threatening to unleash heavy swells across the northeast Caribbean.

Hurricane Lee on Friday charged through warm Atlantic waters as the season's first Category 5 storm, threatening to unleash heavy swells across the northeast Caribbean.

The hurricane is not expected to make landfall, but meteorologists warned it would generate dangerous waves of up to 15 feet (5 meters) across the northern coast of Puerto Rico and other nearby islands. While Lee is on a path that would take it a couple hundred miles (kilometres) northeast of the Caribbean, tropical storm conditions are not forecast for the region.

"Although the hurricane is incredibly powerful, its wind field is not particularly large," the National Hurricane Center said.

The hurricane was located about 630 miles (1,015 kilometres) east of the northern Leeward Islands. It had winds of up to 165 miles per hour (270 kilometres per hour) and was moving west-northwest at 14 mph (22 kph).

Lee is expected to keep strengthening and reach winds of up to 180 mph (290 kph). Only seven Atlantic hurricanes have had winds of that magnitude since 1966, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Among those was Hurricane Dorian, which pummeled the northern Bahamas in 2019 as a Category 5 storm, hovering over small islands for some two days.

The center said that dangerous surf and deadly rip currents will likely hit the northern Leeward Islands later Friday. They would spread to Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and Bermuda over the weekend.

"We will see waves between 10 and 15 feet (3 and 5 meters), so we don't want anyone on the beaches," said Ernesto Morales with the National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico.