Hur­ri­cane Lee whirled through open wa­ters on Thurs­day as fore­cast­ers warned it could be­come the first Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm of the At­lantic sea­son.

Lee was not ex­pect­ed to make land­fall while on a pro­ject­ed path that will take it near the north­east Caribbean, al­though fore­cast­ers said trop­i­cal storm con­di­tions are pos­si­ble on some is­lands. Me­te­o­rol­o­gists said it was too ear­ly to pro­vide de­tails on po­ten­tial rain­fall and wind gusts.

The storm was lo­cat­ed some 965 miles (1,555 kilo­me­tres) from the north­ern Lee­ward Is­lands. It had winds of up to 80 miles per hour (130 kilo­me­tres per hour) and was mov­ing west-north­west at 13 mph (20 kph).

Lee was fore­cast to de­vel­op in­to an “ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous” ma­jor hur­ri­cane by ear­ly Fri­day.

“The en­vi­ron­ment around the cy­clone looks ide­al for rapid in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion,” the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi said.

Life-threat­en­ing surf was ex­pect­ed to hit the Less­er An­tilles on Fri­day and reach the British and U.S. Vir­gin Is­lands, Puer­to Ri­co, His­pan­io­la, the Ba­hamas and Bermu­da this week­end, the Cen­ter said.

Lee is the 12th named storm of the At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 and peaks in Sep­tem­ber.

The Na­tion­al Ocean and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion in Au­gust fore­cast­ed be­tween 14 to 21 named storms this sea­son, with six to 11 of them ex­pect­ed to be­come hur­ri­canes, and of those, two to five pos­si­bly de­vel­op­ing in­to ma­jor hur­ri­canes.

In the Pa­cif­ic, Hur­ri­cane Jo­va churned through open wa­ters far from Mex­i­co’s south­west coast as a Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm. It posed no threat to land.

It was lo­cat­ed some 535 miles (860 kilo­me­tres) south­west of the south­ern tip of Ba­ja Cal­i­for­nia and mov­ing west-north­west at 16 mph (26 kph) with winds up to 160 mph (260 kph). The storm is ex­pect­ed to weak­en start­ing late Thurs­day. —SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)