Dorian on Sunday strengthened to a "catastrophic" Category 5 storm as it closed in on the Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said. Michael Lowry, a strategic planner with FEMA, tweeted the storm was now one of the seven strongest ever recorded, dating back to the 1850s. Forecasters said the storm was expected to get close to Florida, but make landfall in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Speaking to reporters outside of Marine One on Sunday, Trump said the storm "appears to be bigger than we’ve ever seen.
"That’s the problem," Trump said. "We don’t know where it’s going to hit, seems to be going to Florida, now it should be going to Georgia, the Carolinas. Alabama to get a bit of a beat down. You’ll be learning more probably over the course of the next 24 hours."
It was unclear why Trump referenced Alabama, which is not in the hurricane's projected path. The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, tweeted Sunday morning: "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian."
"We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama," the NWS added. "The system will remain too far east."
Speaking at the FEMA headquarters later on Sunday, Trump urged "everyone in Hurricane Dorian's path to heed all warnings and evacuation orders from local authorities" as the storm picks up strength.
"We don't even know what's coming at us," he said. "I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of a Category 5, I knew it existed. And I've seen some Category 4s but you don't even see them that much. But a Category 5 is something that I don't even know that I've heard the term other than I know it's there."
Dorian is the fourth Category 5 storm to hit the Atlantic during Trump's presidency, after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and Michael in 2018.
Speaking with CBS's "Face the Nation," former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas and a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, said he was "really disappointed" that Trump "proposed taking money from FEMA in the middle of hurricane season for walls or cages or militarization of the border that we do not need."
"As president I would fully fund FEMA," he said. "I would invest in the resiliency of communities in Florida and Georgia, the Carolinas, and Puerto Rico to make sure that they're ready for the next storm because the scientists have told (us) these storms are only going to become more frequent, more devastating, and more deadly as the climate continues to change."
On "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., suggested a correlation between climate change and stronger hurricanes.
"Well, first off we know climate is changing and then we know our storms seem to be getting bigger," Scott said, adding, "We don't know what the cause is but we've got to react to it."