Wilma threatens US in record hurricane season
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Your support makes all the difference.The southern coast of the US is bracing itself for another hurricane at the end of a storm season as busy as any on record.
Wilma, which yesterday strengthened from a tropical storm to a category 1 hurricane, with winds of around 75mph, was moving east through the Caribbean between Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and western Cuba. Prediction models suggested it would strike Florida's Gulf coast as a category 3 hurricane this week.
Authorities in the Cayman islands urged residents to be on alert as Wilma's system moved nearer, delivering heavy rains and strong winds. In Jamaica, heavy rainfall flooded several low-lying communities, blocked roads with mud and forced 100 people to move to emergency shelters.
Officials said that a 35-year-old man drowned in central Jamaica after he was swept away by a rain-swollen river while trying to rescue some goats. Wilma is the Atlantic hurricane season's 12th hurricane and its 21st named storm, tying the record set in 1933, and last equalled in 1969.
It has also exhausted the available list of storm name letters, since q, u, x, y and z are not used. If any more storms form this season letters from the Greek alphabet would be used. That has never happened in the 60 years that Atlantic storms have been named.
Last night Wilma was about 195 miles south-east of Grand Cayman. Experts at the National Hurricane Centre in Miami have been studying seven different models predicting Wilma's likely course.
All suggest the storm will move north-west before turning north-east and descending upon the south-central coast of Florida. But the models suggest Wilma will probably miss the oil and natural gas rigs and refineries on the Gulf of Mexico which were badly battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in late August and September.
Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane centre, said: "The message is that the season is certainly not over. People in the Gulf coast are going to have to watch Wilma. There's no scenario that takes it towards Louisiana or Mississippi, but that could change."
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