Hurricane Lee has begun “rapidly intensifying” today, with the US National Hurricane Centre reporting the question was no longer whether its growth would continue but “rather how strong Lee will get, and how quickly will it get there”.

The NHC reported at noon: “Many of the models are calling for remarkable rates of intensification, beyond rates normally seen with model forecasts.”

The recently launched Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System has the storm, now Category 2, exceeding wind strengths of 170mph “within the next two days”.

One weather models has Lee going “above the Category 5 threshold”, the NHC said.

The NHC added it was increasingly confident that Hurricane Lee would follow the projected west-northwest track to skirt the northern Caribbean over this weekend.

The site said that swells from Lee would start reaching Bermuda this weekend.

The Bermuda Weather Service has not ranked the storm a potential threat to the island.

Its three-day projection at noon has Lee 760 miles south-southeast of Bermuda by early Sunday afternoon.

A new storm was brewing off the African coast today, with Tropical Depression 14 on course to grow into a tropical storm tonight.

The AccuWeather service updated its assessment of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, increasing the number of major hurricanes — Category 3 or stronger with maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or greater — from one to three to three to five.

Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at Accuweather, said Lee had the potential to strength into “a powerhouse Category 5 hurricane, the strongest hurricane of the year”.