By Wendy Anders

At least a dozen flights both entering and leaving Costa Rica around noon today were cancelled due to  Hurricane Matthew, reported Aeris, the managers of the Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) in Alajuela, Costa Rica.

Several outbound flights on Jet Blue, American Airlines, and Spirit Air heading towards Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida were cancelled around noon. And a handful of other flights on these airlines scheduled to leave the East Coast and arrive this afternoon in Costa Rica were also cancelled due to weather in the Atlantic.

Several U.S. states have called for a state of emergency in advance of the hurricane’s landfall in the U.S. which is scheduled for this evening.

Death tolls from flooding by Matthew in the Caribbean continue to rise in Cuba and Haiti. Haiti was particularly hard hit where over 264 are dead from the storm, said the Spanish news agency, EFE, in an updated estimate.

According to experts, Matthew is the strongest hurricane recorded in the Atlantic since 2007.