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Hurricane Wilma strongest hurricane on record

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 07:30 CDT

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."

Source: REUTERS

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