Still over the Bahamas, and approaching the city of Freeport in the west of the country. From there, directly west, is Florida.

This was posted by the Weather Channel on Facebook - this is either very brave or very foolish, make your own minds up.

Florida Power & Light Co. said the storm could be so powerful that it may have to rebuild its electric grid in the affected areas, the Sun-Sentinel reports., external

FPL anticipates as many as 2.7 million customers in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Date counties could lose power. 

As of 2pm ET (18:00 GMT), Matthew was located about 125 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, bringing with it maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour.

A wind gust of 59 mph was reported at Fort Lauderdale-Holywood International Airport on Thursday afternoon. The airport is now closed. 

Forecasters said Florida's Palm Beach County could be the heaviest point of impact for the category four hurricane when it makes landfall late on Thursday night or early on Friday.

We'll bring you all the latest on Vanilla Ice's well-being over the next day..

Image source, AP

As we've made clear, we don't know exactly where Matthew will make landfall, but it may well be on Cape Canaveral, where the Kennedy Space Center is based.

While space shuttles don't take off from the site any more, it is still a key Nasa site. The New York Times reported in April, external on the threat to the site from rising sea waters.

Nasa themselves have been providing updates on Matthew's progress over the past week.

And here is the view from the International Space Station on Wednesday as the storm was close to Cuba:

Earlier on Thursday, Politico reported, external that the Clinton campaign has been buying up airtime in Florida on The Weather Channel for the next five days.

Her camp spent $63,000 to reach the popular channel's viewers in the swing state for five days beginning on Thursday, 

However, the Clinton campaign has now issued a statement saying that they will "delay" all Florida ads until after Hurricane Matthew has passed.

"Earlier in the week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida. Less than 1% of those changes included the Weather Channel. We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes," campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson said.

Image source, Getty Images

The Clinton campaign has, however, called on Florida officials to extend voter registration deadlines because of Matthew.

Voters in the state must register by Tuesday to be eligible to vote in the November election.

This comes with the caveat that the hurricane's course may change, but as it stands, this is where models are showing it will make landfall.

That dog really does not look happy to be going out in strong winds.

In Boca Raton, close to where Matthew is expected to make landfall in Florida, police did a live Q&A on Facebook - you can watch it below (it starts at about the 40-second mark).

Image source, AP

The BBC has spoken to Guy Calvert-Lee of the charity Tearfund - he's been speaking to a pilot who has flown over the worst-hit areas of Haiti. Here's what he was told:

We've been saying throughout the day that parts of Florida near Jacksonville could see a storm surge of some 9ft (2.7m) - that figure has now been upgraded by the National Hurricane Center to 11ft, bringing with it the risk of "life-threatening inundation".

The islands are being battered. The US National Weather Center has warned that the west of the country could see "devastating impacts from storm surge, extreme winds and heavy rains".

Matthew is still passing over the Bahamas, but it will be a while until we know how badly the country has been affected.

Here is a video from the Bahamas in the past hour:

And here is a video we posted earlier as the storm passed over the capital, Nassau.

An update to our post from 15 minutes ago: Nicole, way out to the west of Hurricane Matthew, has now become a hurricane.

A statement by the White House confirms that President Obama has signed an emergency declaration in Florida.

This allows teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) as well as the Department of Homeland Security to be deployed.

Governor Rick Scott had already declared his own state of emergency that allowed the National Guard to be deployed.

Matthew is on its way to Florida, but there is another storm out at sea as well - Storm Nicole.

Nicole is just a little under hurricane strength right now, and might actually become a hurricane later on today, external. As it stands, it does not pose much of a threat - Bermuda may see heavy winds in the coming days.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Nicole is likely to weaken after that.

Note that there is another formation (where the yellow cross is marked in this image by the National Hurricane Center) that may end up developing into a storm.

Image source, National Hurricane Center