Hurricane Felix became an extremely dangerous Category Five storm last night as it swept through the southern Caribbean on a path toward Central America and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Hurricane Felix is pictured moving west in the Caribbean Sea in this satellite photograph taken yesterday
On a similar - though more southerly - track as last month's powerful Hurricane Dean, which killed 27 people, Felix's top sustained winds increased to 270 kilometres per hour, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
Forecasters at the hurricane center said Felix, the second hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, was strengthening at one of the fastest rates seen, as measured by the drop in its minimum internal pressure.
Hurricane Dean became a Category Five storm in mid-August before hitting the Yucatan, south of the tourist resort of Cancun.
Category Five hurricanes have been rare. Before the devastating 2005 hurricane season, only two years on record had seen more than one such hurricane.