Record Hurricane Wilma threatens Florida

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Wilma became the fiercest
Atlantic hurricane ever recorded as it churned toward western
Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, threatening
densely populated Florida after killing 10 people in Haiti.

The season’s record-tying 21st storm, fueled by the warm
waters of the northwest Caribbean Sea, strengthened with
unprecedented speed into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank
on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity.

Oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico were expected
to escape this storm but Florida’s orange groves were at risk.

Early Wednesday, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane
measured top sustained winds of 175 mph (280 kph) and logged a
minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest ever observed in
the Atlantic basin. That meant Wilma was briefly stronger than
any Atlantic storm on record, including both Katrina, which
devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the
Texas-Louisiana coast in September.

Wilma’s top winds weakened to 160 mph (260 kph) by early
evening. It was still a potentially catastrophic Category 5
storm but forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said it
could weaken further once it slips into the Gulf of Mexico on
Friday.

Computer models used to predict its long-term path diverged
widely, though Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said it
was still likely to slice across southern Florida as a
formidable hurricane on Saturday and Sunday.

Wilma was expected to miss oil and gas facilities in the
Gulf of Mexico but some energy companies evacuated nonessential
workers from drilling platforms in the central and eastern Gulf
as a precaution.

Frozen orange juice futures hit a fresh six-year high on
Wednesday 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. Raw sugar prices wobbled on
concerns for Wilma’s impact on Florida’s sugar cane fields.

FRIGHTENING STORM LOOMS

Florida was hit by four hurricanes last year and has been
struck by hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Rita this year. State
emergency officials warned everyone south of the Tampa-Orlando
corridor to prepare for Wilma.

“This is a very frightening storm that is on our doorstep,”
said Monroe County Mayor Dixie Spehar in the low-lying Florida
Keys island chain.

Authorities in the Keys, which are connected to mainland
Florida by a single road, ordered tourists out on Wednesday and
told the islands’ 80,000 residents to evacuate on Thursday.
Helicopters and ambulances moved critically ill patients from
the Lower Keys Medical Center to a sister hospital in Alabama.

Mayfield said Wilma could churn up 35- to 50-foot (11- to
15-meter) waves over the open sea and send huge breakers over
the coast. “I just don’t see how the Florida Keys will get out
of this without having a major impact,” Mayfield said.

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 posted for the Yucatan, Cuba and Belize.

Wilma’s rains triggered mudslides that killed up to 10
people in deforested and impoverished Haiti.

The storm was expected to dump up to 25 inches of rain on
mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 15 inches on Jamaica and
the Cayman Islands, a British colony south of Cuba. Honduras
and Mexico could expect up to 12 inches of rain, the hurricane
center said.

By 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the hurricane was about 285 miles

southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.

Fishermen took their boats to safety, MTV canceled a major
Latin awards show on Mexico’s Caribbean coast and authorities
began evacuating 10,000 people from the coastal state of
Quintana Roo. Tourists lined up at the airport to escape the
beach resort of Cancun, but many flights were full.

“We’ll get on a bus or take a car, we’re very determined,”
said German vacationer Ulrike Gruber, 27.

Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season,
tying a 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 to run but has already
spawned three of the most intense hurricanes on record —
Katrina, Rita and Wilma. 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.

Wilma was moving west-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph) and was
expected to turn northwest by Thursday. It was forecast to
skirt western Cuba and move into the southeastern Gulf of
Mexico, then turn sharply northeast toward Florida.

Cuba suspended school in the western province of Pinar del
Rio and began evacuating thousands of coastal residents.
Workers in the province hastened to protect tobacco seedlings
for the next harvest of leaves that make Cuba’s famed cigars.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle and Esteban Israel
in Havana, Laura Myers in Key West, Rene Pastor in New York)