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WORLD / America
Hurricane Felix seen becoming top-ranked storm
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-03 09:30
WILLEMSTAD, Curacao?-- Hurricane Felix intensified at an alarming rate on
Sunday while passing north of Aruba and was expected to become an
extremely dangerous Category 5 storm as it brushed Central America and
neared Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, US forecasters said.
Hurricane Felix is pictured moving west in the Caribbean Sea in this
satellite photograph taken at 1745 GMT (1:45 pm EDT) on September 2,
2007. [Reuters]
On a similar though more southerly track toward the Yucatan as last
month's powerful Hurricane Dean, which killed 27 people, Felix's top
sustained winds had increased to 140 mph (220 km per hour) by 5 pm EDT,
the US National Hurricane Center said.
That made the second hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, located
around 440 miles southeast of the Jamaican capital, Kingston, a Category
4, or "major" hurricane capable of causing extensive damage.
Forecasters at the Miami-based hurricane center said the storm was
strengthening at one of the fastest rates seen, as measured by the drop
in its minimum internal pressure.
It would be passing over a warm eddy of water in the central Caribbean,
finding in it the fuel needed to intensify further within 36 hours into a
rare and potentially catastrophic Category 5 hurricane with winds over
155 mph (249 kph).
"The official intensity forecast could be conservative and there is
certainly the potential for us to have another Category Five hurricane on
our hands before all is said and done," said hurricane center storm
expert Richard Pasch.
Hurricane Dean in mid-August became a Category 5 on the five-step
Saffir-Simpson scale before slamming into the Yucatan.
Such strong hurricanes have been rare in the past. Before the devastating
2005 hurricane season, only two years had seen more than one Category 5
hurricane. The 2005 season experienced four, including Katrina, Rita and
Wilma.
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