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Hurricane Fiona churns up the waves on its way to pound Canada

Hurricane Fiona plowed past New England leaving surfers riding high.

Waves topped 8 feet on some south-facing beaches — especially in Rhode Island and off Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

“Fiona is leaving big swells and nice waves for surfing,” the National Weather Service reported Friday.

They weren’t kidding. Waves were 10-to-18-feet high south of Nantucket in the open ocean.

Fiona is forecast to make landfall Saturday morning in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland in what could be one of the biggest storms ever to hit there.

“This is definitely going to be one of, if not the most powerful, tropical cyclones to affect our part of the country,” Ian Hubbard, meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, told the Associated Press. “It’s going to be definitely as severe and as bad as any I’ve seen.”

Fiona hit Bermuda Friday while earlier walloping Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the French island of Guadeloupe.

Puerto Rico was hit the hardest, so far, with power knocked out on the island.

But before you relax, the National Hurricane Center said a newly formed tropical depression in the southern Caribbean was expected to begin strengthening, and hit Cuba early Tuesday as a hurricane and then hit southern Florida early Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.