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Bahamas, Florida Keys under hurricane alert

Posted on: Sunday, 18 September 2005, 12:18 CDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - The Florida Keys and parts of the Bahamas were under a hurricane watch on Sunday as forecasters warned that an unnamed tropical storm system could become a hurricane in the next two days.

The system, officially a tropical depression, could be Tropical Storm Rita by later on Sunday and a hurricane by Tuesday, when it was expected to be in the Florida Straits between the Keys and Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

A hurricane watch was issued for all of the Florida Keys, a 110-mile (177-km) chain of islands off the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, and the northwestern Bahamas. A hurricane watch tells residents they could see hurricane conditions within 36 hours.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the center of the depression was about 390 miles east-southeast of Nassau, the Bahamian capital, the hurricane center said. It was moving to the west at about 12 mph (19 kph).

The system had sustained winds of 35 mph (56 kph) and will become a tropical storm when winds reach 39 mph (63 kph).

A tropical storm warning was in effect for the Turks and Caicos islands, a British territory near the Bahamas, and for the central and southeast Bahamas.

Rita would be the 17th tropical storm or hurricane of an unusually busy Atlantic season, which, on average, sees about 11 storms. Hurricane Katrina has been blamed for at least 883 deaths after it hit the U.S. Gulf coast in late August.

Tropical Storm Philippe, meanwhile, was about 425 miles

east-southeast of the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. It was moving on a north-northwest track that would take it through the open Atlantic and was no immediate threat to land.

Tropical Storm Ophelia was near Halifax, Nova Scotia after drenching North Carolina late last week.

Source: REUTERS

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