Hurricane Wilma strongest on record

MIAMI - Hurricane Wilma became the fiercest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded as it churned towards western Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula today, threatening densely populated Florida after killing 10 people in Haiti.

The season's record-tying 21st storm, fuelled 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 on Wednesday local time, a US Air Force reconnaissance plane measured top sustained winds of 280 km/h 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 260 km/h by early evening. It was still a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm but forecasters at the National Hurricane Centre 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 Centre 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 non-essential 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 per cent of last year's crop. Raw sugar prices wobbled on concerns for Wilma's impact on Florida's sugar cane fields.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

- REUTERS