Irma made landfall as a Category 5 storm in Camaguey Archipelago on Cuba's north-central Atlantic coast packing 260km/h winds late on Friday, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said. Category 5 is the NHC's most powerful designation.
Irma, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to hit Florida on Sunday morning, bringing massive damage from wind and flooding to the fourth-largest state by population.
The scenes along Cuba's coast were gradually coming to resemble horrors of other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma barreled in for a direct hit at Ciego de Avila province around midnight.
Al Jazeera's Julia Galiano, reporting from Havana, said it would take several hours to assess the extent of damages in Cuba while the storm makes the expected right turn heading to Florida.
"We have seen a video of a very serious flooding," she said. "Cuban officials said this morning that one million residents had been evacuated ahead of the storm."
"Cuba has a very well functioning system when it comes to preparedness for these kinds of disasters, which results in much lower numbers of victims compared to the rest of the region."
READ MORE: Deaths and destruction as Hurricane Irma powers through
The United States has been hit by only three Category 5 storms since 1851, and Irma is far larger than the last one in 1992, Hurricane Andrew, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
"We are running out of time. If you are in an evacuation zone, you need to go now. This is a catastrophic storm like our state has never seen," Governor Rick Scott told reporters, adding the effects would be felt from coast to coast in the state.
A total of 5.6 million people, or 25 percent of the state's population, were ordered to evacuate Florida, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
US President Donald Trump said in a videotaped statement that Irma was "a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential" and called on people to heed recommendations from government officials and law enforcement.
In Palm Beach, Trump's waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was ordered evacuated.
FEMA on full alert
Irma was set to hit the United States two weeks after Hurricane Harvey, a powerful Category 4 storm, struck Texas, killing about 60 people and causing property damage estimated at up to $180bn in Texas and Louisiana.
Officials were preparing a massive response, the head of FEMA said.
About nine million people in Florida may lose power, some for weeks, said Florida Power & Light Co, which serves almost half of the state's 20.6 million residents.
Amid the exodus, nearly one-third of all gas stations in Florida's metropolitan areas were out of gasoline, with scattered outages in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to Gasbuddy.com, a retail fuel price tracking service.
READ MORE: Irma heads to Florida, kills 22 across Caribbean
As it roared in from the east, Irma ravaged small islands in the northeastern Caribbean, including Barbuda, St Martin and the British and US Virgin Islands, flattening homes and hospitals and ripping down trees.But even as they came to grips with the massive destruction, residents of the islands faced the threat of another major storm, Hurricane Jose.
Jose, expected to reach the northeastern Caribbean on Saturday, was an extremely dangerous storm nearing Category 5 status, with winds of up to 250km/h, the NHC said on Friday.
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