Posted on 10/19/2005 6:18:27 AM PDT by Dirty Old Bulldog
MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Wilma became the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record on Wednesday as it churned towards western Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on a track towards Florida, having already killed 10 people in Haiti.
The season's record-tying 21st storm, fuelled by the warm waters of the northwest Caribbean Sea, strengthened alarmingly into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity.
A U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane measured maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (280 kph), with higher gusts, the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said.
The plane also recorded a minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest value ever observed in the Atlantic basin. That meant Wilma was stronger than any storm on record, including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana coast in September.
Storm warnings were in force for Honduras in Central America, where more than 1,000 people died this month after Hurricane Stan triggered mudslides that buried entire villages. Warnings were also issued for the Yucatan, Cuba and the Cayman Islands.
Wilma has killed up to 10 people who died in mudslides in deforested and impoverished Haiti after several days of heavy rain, civil protection officials said.
Wilma was expected to bring rainfall of up to 25 inches (64 cm) to mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 15 inches (38 cm) to Jamaica and to the Cayman Islands. Honduras and Mexico could expect up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, the hurricane centre said.
By 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), the hurricane was about 340 miles (550 km) southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.
Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying the record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.
The season still has six weeks left to run. Hurricane experts say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years. Climatologists also fear global warming could be making the storms more intense.
FLORIDA IN WILMA'S SIGHTS
The storm was moving west-northwest at 8 mph (13 km/h). A turn towards the northwest was expected in the next 24 hours. Once in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, Wilma was expected to make a sharp turn to the northeast, towards Florida.
Wilma was not expected to threaten New Orleans or Mississippi, where Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,200 people and caused more than $30 billion in insured damage.
It was also expected to miss the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico still reeling from Katrina and Rita.
But frozen orange juice futures closed at a six-year high on Tuesday amid fears Wilma could ravage Florida groves that had just begun to recover from the hurricanes that destroyed 40 percent of last year's crop.
Florida was hit by four hurricanes last year and has been struck by hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Rita this year.
Cuba's western tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio braced for heavy rain. More than 5,000 people were evacuated from eastern Cuba, where two days of rain caused floods and mudslides in the provinces of Guantanamo, Santiago and Granma.
Wilma was expected to weaken before reaching Florida.
Nevertheless, officials in the Florida Keys, a vulnerable chain of low-lying islands connected to mainland Florida by a single road, warned residents and tourists to take the storm seriously.
Tourists would be ordered to evacuate on Thursday and residents would be told to flee the coming storm on Friday.
"This is our fourth storm but this one is really aggressive," Irene Toner, director of emergency management for the county that encompasses the islands, told local radio. "This one we are taking seriously. The damage is going to be substantial."
I dare say, he's not heading to Florida.
Why should there only be one thread on this?
Your link is to the live thread. This goes to a news story.
No Pacific storm of that strength is ever likely to come close to hitting the continental United States, so why would you expect Americans to care? It gets colder in Siberia than it does in North Dakota in winter, but that doesn't make record cold in that state any less noteworthy when it happens.
"Climatologists also fear global warming could be making the storms more intense."
How odd for Reuters to slip that in. I don't think I've ever heard such a thing before. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
I can do without orange juice for a year......doing without gasoline would be more difficult.
I guess I was suspecting that this was sloppy reporting played up for drama. This seems correct after a little research, which yields conflicting numbers for "lowest pressure."
Hurricane damage is not directly related to such an isolated fact anyway. Prayers for all affected.
I'd have to agree with that. Nobody likes paying more for something than they think is fair. But we didn't run out of gasoline - maybe because the higher prices curtailed wasteful use of the product. For sure, my family has altered its fuel use. Who would have anticipated a doubling of fuel costs?
And as an aside, how can the government calculate an accurate CPI by removing the costs of fuel and food from consideration?
well you are asking the media to factually report things that aren't intuitively grasped by much of their audience...kind of like having new years dec. 31st 1999 be the 'millenium' new year...
"And as an aside, how can the government calculate an accurate CPI by removing the costs of fuel and food from consideration?"
Who on earth said they wanted to provide an accurate measure of consumer prices? (humor)
The news folks are so much smarter than the rest of us. I only expect them to report betterer. ;-)
True enough. Living far from the hurricane area, I have to remember that a Cat. 3 is not some weak rainstorm because it isn't Hurricane Andrew.
And in case there are any DU on this thread, DO NOT RUN A GENERATOR IN OR NEAR YOUR HOUSE. KEEP THE GENERATOR AWAY FROM THE HOUSE. Well away.
Your place or mine?
Has anyone seen the satellite images from the 1933 hurricane season??? Oh. That's right. There weren't any weather weather satellites back then. I wonder how many storms turned back into the Atlantic without anyone ever knowing they existed???
The season still has six weeks left to run. Hurricane experts say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years.
Seems like this pattern has occurred many times the past few hundred years. That is the way nature works, and there is not much we can do about this natural cycle.
Was there ever any doubt? Everything is Bush's fault, unless it's good.
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