Hurricane Emily weakens into a Category 3 storm

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hurricane Emily weakened a little but
is still a dangerous storm churning toward the central
Caribbean Sea and Jamaica with maximum sustained winds near 125
miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami
said in an advisory on Friday.

Earlier Friday morning, the NHC said Emily was a Category 4
storm packing maximum sustained winds of 135 mph.

The storm, now a Category 3 hurricane, was located about
465 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, as of 11 a.m.
EDT (1500 GMT).

On its forecast track, the center of the storm should pass
just south of Jamaica on Saturday, cross the Yucatan Peninsula
in Mexico early Monday, and enter the southwest Gulf of Mexico
on Tuesday before making landfall close to the Texas-Mexico
border near some U.S. oil and natural gas fields off the Texas
coast, according to the NHC.

The center will issue its next advisory at 2 p.m.

Position:

Lat. 12.7 degrees North

Long. 64.0 degrees West

(465 miles east-southwest of Port au Prince, Haiti)

Track: Moving west-northwest near 18 mph Strength: 125 mph
maximum sustained winds with higher gusts.