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Bahamas braces for category four Hurricane Dorian

01 September 2019 15:38 (UTC +04:00)

The Bahamas is bracing for Hurricane Dorian, which strengthened into a category four storm over the weekend, APA reports citing BBC.

The "extremely dangerous" storm was expected to hit the island chain on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, before making landfall on the US east coast.

Residents in Grand Bahama were preparing by boarding up businesses and evacuating the storm's predicted path.

The storm surge could be as high as 15ft (4.6m), officials warned.

Authorities closed some airports in the outlying islands, but the main international airport remains open on Sunday.

The storm was on Sunday morning about 125 miles east of the Bahamas' Great Abaco Island, moving westward at 8mph (13km/h) with maximum sustained winds of nearly 145mph (225km/h).

After hitting the Bahamas, it was expected to move up the US coast, grazing Florida, which had expected a direct hit but appeared to have been spared the worst by a change in the storm's path.