Hurricane Bill churning the Atlantic as a Category 4 storm early Thursday.
The season’s first hurricane in the Atlantic basin reached Category 4 strength on Wednesday as it passed well to the northeast of Puerto Rico and the Windward Islands.
Hurricane Bill’s maximum sustained winds of near 135 miles per hour generated large ocean swells that were pounding the northern Windward Islands on Thursday.
Those swells were predicted to begin affecting the Bahamas, Bermuda and most of the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada by the weekend.
Bermuda issued a hurricane watch Thursday morning, prompting islanders on the 20-square-mile British territory to stock up on emergency supplies.
But the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami was predicting that Bill would pass somewhere between Bermuda and the U.S. mainland over the weekend before taking aim on parts of Atlantic Canada.
Hurricane Bill Track
Satellite Loop Data: CIMSS