Ivan reached Category 5 early this morning with winds of 160mph and gusts even stronger. It ripped through Grenada destroying 90% of the homes there and tearing open a prison allowing convicts to escape. Next in its path in Jamaica where the country has issued a hurricane warning. In the US, officials have ordered the complete evacuation of the Florida Keys as 5-day computer models of Ivan's path has it zeroed in on southern Florida.

We seriously hope those models are wrong. Of all the storm activity that Florida has endured recently, this one looks like the nastiest. While Ivan is one of the strongest storms in the Carribean in over 10 years, it is also worth noting that Category 5 storms tend not to sustain their intensity for long periods of time. The longest living Cat 5 in the Atlantic was 3 days. That fact may be of little comfort to the residents of Florida and definitely worthless to Jamaica.