Hurricane Dorian changes course, strengthens to Category four

MIAMI: Monstrous Hurricane Dorian changed course slightly on Saturday and put itself on a possible track to hit the Carolinas rather than Florida as previously forecast, after a dangerous blast through the Bahamas.

Meteorologists said Dorian has grown into an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm as it heads toward land with great potential for destruction."There´s been a notable change overnight to the forecast of #Dorian after Tuesday,the National Hurricane Centre(NHC) said on Twitter.Dorian will keep moving westward through the weekend but is then forecast to turn northward, towards Georgia and the Carolinas, as it approaches the east coast of Florida early next week, the centre said.

It said this does not rule out Dorian making landfall on the Florida coast, as much of that state remains in the so-called cone of uncertainty -- the range of possibilities for the centre of the storm.

In the Bahamas, government offices closed and people rushed to get ready for a storm they were told could cause catastrophic damage.Prime Minister Hubert Minnis urged residents of the Atlantic Ocean archipelago in the path of the hurricane to seek safety.

"The price you may pay for not evacuating is your life or other serious physical harm,"Minnis said.One resident of the capital Nassau, Lucy Worboys, said,

"The tide is incredibly high at the moment, so people are very concerned about sea surges, as the Bahamas is so flat."The NHC said Dorian is expected to be near or over the northwestern Bahamas on Sunday,and near the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday.

The storm has strengthened to an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane on a fivelevel scale, it said.Winds have intensified to nearly 150 miles per hour (240 kilometres per hour), with higher gusts, according to an NHC update. That makes Dorian almost Category 5.

Minnis told a press conference on Friday that the storm was potentially life-threatening."Those who refuse to evacuate place themselves in very great danger... Do not put your life and those of your loved ones at unnecessary risk."

Worboys said gas stations and supermarkets are packed,and the start of school for her kids has been delayed a few days."We are just thinking - could this one be crazy, or could it be nothing?" she added.

President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter on Saturday morning saying, "It´s moving around and very hard to predict, except that it is one of the biggest and strongest (and really wide) that we have seen in decades. Be safe!"