Caribbean:Gusty winds knocked down trees and stinging rain flooded streets in the Netherlands Antilles yesterday as Hurricane Felix strengthened into a major storm north of the Dutch Caribbean islands.
On a similar though more southerly track towards Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as last month's powerful Hurricane Dean, which killed 27 people, Felix's top sustained winds had increased to 205km/h (125 miles per hour) by yesterday afternoon, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
That made the second hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, located about 790km (490 miles) southeast of the Jamaican capital Kingston, a category three, or major hurricane capable of causing serious damage.
Hurricane Dean in mid-August became a rare category five on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, the most dangerous and potentially catastrophic of storms, like Katrina, Rita and Wilma in the devastating hurricane season of 2005.
There seemed nothing to prevent Felix from gaining more strength and the Miami-based hurricane centre predicted it would become a category four storm with winds in excess of 210km/h (131 miles per hour) in 48 hours as it approached Honduras and Nicaragua.
The hurricane was moving toward the west-northwest at a brisk 30km/h (18 miles per hour). The Dutch authorities lifted hurricane watches for Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire but Jamaica and the Cayman Islands issued storm watches just in case.
None of the major computer models used to predict hurricane tracks took Felix through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico, where the United States gets a third of its domestic crude oil and 15 per cent of its natural gas production.
But most of the models did take Felix across the Yucatan Peninsula into the Bay of Campeche, where Mexico has some major oil fields. Long-range forecasts are unreliable, however.
Energy markets were on alert, as they have been for all hurricanes since 2004 and 2005, when storms like Ivan, Katrina and Rita toppled oil platforms and severed pipelines, sending crude prices to record levels.
Neither Curacao nor its sister island, Bonaire, reported serious damage or injuries but dawn broke to reveal flooded streets and toppled trees in Curacao.
"The local population and visitors remained in their homes and hotels overnight. No calls were received on the emergency line set up in preparation for the storm," Bonaire's governor Herbert Domacasse said in a statement.
In Curacao, unused to hurricanes because the storms normally track well to the north, supermarkets remained open late into the night to allow startled residents to stock up on emergency supplies. The authorities opened shelters for people living in vulnerable areas, such as on the coastline, and the island's airport closed for several hours.
Felix's hurricane force winds extended out only 20km (15 miles) and tropical storm force winds 185km (115 miles), meaning Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles experienced gusty conditions but not the full fury of the storm.
The 2007 hurricane season, expected to be a busy one, is approaching its peak.
Most storms hit from August 20th to mid-October, with September 10th marking the statistical height of the season.
- (Reuters, additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami)