The winds may have eased significantly, but it is still capable of causing extensive damage and widespread flooding is inevitable.
At its strongest, Donna's winds reach 215 kilometres an hour with gusts of up to 260km/h. That made it equivalent to a Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
In doing so, Donna become the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded during the month of May in the southern hemisphere. It surpassed the power of Cyclone Nadu way back in 1986.
It is all the more remarkable that a storm of such intensity should develop this late in the season, which officially ended on April 30.