Florida: Hurricane Wilma knifed through Florida with winds up to 125 mph (200 kmph) on Monday, breaking water mains and leaving over 3 million people without electricity in Florida.
Six people were killed in Florida, bringing the death toll from the storm's march through the tropics to 25.
Officials in the state's three most populous areas?Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties?were prepping to distribute ice, water and other items to storm-struck residents, while utility-restoration efforts could stretch into weeks.
Officials estimated that only one in 10 Keys residents obeyed the mandatory evacuation order.
Wilma weakened to a Category 2 storm with winds of 105 mph (168 kmph). But it was still powerful enough to peel away roofs, flatten trees, litter the streets with billboards and light up the sky with the blue-green flash of popping power transformers.
After a slow, week-long journey that saw it pound Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for two days, Wilma made a mercifully swift seven-hour dash across lower Florida from its southwestern corner to heavily populated Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast.
The hurricane was expected to race up the Atlantic Seaboard and link up with an area of low pressure, raising fears about renewed flooding in areas already hit by eight consecutive days of rain.
A flood watch has been issued covering most of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, along with parts of northern Connecticut and southern New Hampshire.
To underscore the storm's vast reach, a tornado touched down near Melbourne on the east coast, damaging an apartment complex. No one was injured.
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