Over 190,000 homes in the US state of Florida have now lost power as a result of Hurricane Irma, local energy company FPL reports on its website, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa.

On the nearby Florida Keys archipelago, 29,000 customers are also without power, Keys Energy Services tweeted.

Some experts say that over one million Floridians could be without electricity by the time the storm crosses the state.

The outages came shortly after the National Weather Service forecast office at Key West recorded the first hurricane-force wind gust associated with Irma, measuring 119.1 kilometres per hour.