Hurricane Irma, battering the Caribbean and threatening to make landfall in Florida in the coming days, is by one measure already a record-setting storm.
With peak one-minute sustained winds of 295 km/h, Irma as measured by wind speed is the most powerful hurricane to form in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Weather Service.
Four other storms have had winds as strong in the overall Atlantic region, but they were in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, which usually have warmer waters. Hurricane Allen hit 305 km/h in 1980, while Wilma (2005), Gilbert (1988) and the Florida Keys hurricane of 1935 all had winds of about 297 km/h.
For the record, Patricia on Oct. 23, 2015, reached a peak one-minute speed of 345 km/h in the eastern Pacific, where water temperatures are usually warmer than the Atlantic. Patricia had weakened by the time it made landfall in Jalisco, Mexico, and mostly missed heavily populated areas so the death toll was in the single digits.
