Hurricane Dennis slammed into the Florida Gulf Coast last night with 190 kilometres-an-hour winds snapping trees and blowing roofs off buildings along the shoreline.
The ferocious Category 3 storm forced the evacuation of over a million residents of Florida and the coastal areas of Alabama and Mississippi, where a three-metre tidal surge was forecast.
Near the city of Pensacola 100 guests were evacuated from an hotel as its aluminium roof was blown off, police said.
CNN showed pictures of a huge Ramada Hotel sign crashing down near Pensacola and sending twisted metal strips whirling along a roadway along with tree branches. Dennis has already left behind a swathe of destruction and death as it churned its was across Haiti and Cuba, killing 32 people.
In Cuba, 10 people, including an 18-day-old baby, are known to have died when the hurricane hit the southern coast, with winds approaching 240km/h. President Fidel Castro said Dennis had invaded the country "with all its diabolical force", and Cuban state television showed pictures of rows of houses torn apart by the storm.
"This is serious, this is a very dangerous storm," Florida governor Jeb Bush told a news conference as Hurricane Dennis approached the US coast. "If you are in a mandatory evacuation area, please do so."
Dennis is the first hurricane in the Atlantic this year and the strongest to form so early in the season since records began in 1851, according to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
With the waters of the Atlantic rising to record high temperatures this year, the Caribbean and south east United States faces the prospect of a record hurricane season.
Dennis strengthened to a rare Category 4 storm as it crossed the warm Gulf of Mexico waters, which would have made it the most powerful storm on record in the Florida Panhandle.
However, as it approached it weakened to a Category 3, similar in strength to Hurricane Ivan, which smashed into the same stretch of Florida coast last year causing 29 deaths and widespread destruction, and quickly weakened further to Category 2.
National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield said the distinction between a Category 3 and a Category 4 hurricane would matter little to people in the path of Dennis. "It's a little bit like the difference between getting run over by an 18-wheeler and a freight train," he said. "Neither prospect is good."
Pensacola, a popular tourism and recreation site with a population of 55,000 suffered billions of dollars in damage last year. Three thousand people are still homeless and living in caravans.
In total some 1.8 million people from Florida to Mississippi were urged to evacuate their homes but many stayed to ride out the storm.