Hurricane Beta roared ashore along Nicaragua’s remote Caribbean coastline today, ripping off roofs, toppling trees, provoking floods, and causing four rivers to overflow in Honduras before weakening to a tropical storm.

Mexico’s popular Cancun resort area has taken a battering from Hurricane Wilma as tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid howling winds and shattering glass.

Monroe County officials have ordered visitors out of Florida Keys ahead of Hurricane Wilma, the first US evacuations caused by the Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Dennis flooded roads in Haiti and threatened a direct hit on Jamaica, pushing oil prices sharply higher and becoming the second storm to threaten oil output in the Gulf of Mexico.

A strengthened Hurricane Ivan headed towards Cuba’s tobacco growing north west corner, with winds reaching 195 mph tonight, after ravaging the Cayman Islands.

Hurricane Ivan pummelled the Cayman Islands with fierce winds that ripped off roofs and floodwaters that swamped homes, then strengthened to an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm as it headed for western Cuba today.

Hurricane Ivan lost its catastrophic capabilities as it skirted Grand Cayman today, but it still uprooted trees, burst the banks of canals and flooded some homes with winds near 155mph.

Hurricane Ivan, with winds of more than 140 mph, was barrelling across the Caribbean toward more holiday isles tonight after devastating Grenada.

A state of emergency was declared for all of Florida today as a tropical storm and then a hurricane raged closer, the first time the state has faced such a potentially disastrous plight in almost 98 years.

Nearly a million people were without electricity on America’s east coast tonight as hurricane Isabel slammed ashore.

More than 75,000 people were urged to evacuate the coast of North Carolina today as Hurricane Isabel weakened but remained a dangerous storm on a track toward land.

Hurricane Michelle roared across Cuba today as the government shut down power and evacuated 750,000 people from the path of a storm which generated gusts of up to 130 mph.