Hurricane Wilma strongest hurricane on record

By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Wilma became the most powerful
Atlantic hurricane on record on Wednesday as it churned toward
western Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula on a track toward
Florida, having already killed 10 people in Haiti.

The season’s record-tying 21st storm, fueled 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, with higher gusts, the U.S.
National Hurricane Center 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 to
mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 15 inches to Jamaica and
to the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British colony south of Cuba.
Honduras and Mexico could expect up to 12 inches

of rain, the hurricane center said.

By 8 a.m. EDT, the hurricane was about 340 miles

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 toward 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, toward 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.”