Ernesto nears hurricane strength [Video]

Ernesto strengthened to a hurricane Wednesday after lashing Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands with flooding rainfall and damaging winds that have left hundreds of thousands without power.Ernesto, the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 mph – making it a Category 1 storm – as of 11 a.m. Wednesday. Its center was about 175 miles northwest of San Juan after passing over the Virgin Islands on Tuesday and then sidestepping Puerto Rico. As a result, more than 300,000 customers in Puerto Rico were without power Wednesday morning, according to LUMA Energy, the private company that operates the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, nearly 46,000 customers were without power, which is about 92% of the island’s tracked customers, according to PowerOutage.us.Nearly a half a foot of rain had fallen so far in Puerto Rico …