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Hurricane Felix upgraded
02/09/2007 16:01 - (SA)
Atlanta - The US National Hurricane Centre says Hurricane Felix, the second of the Atlantic hurricane season, was upgraded to a category 2 storm on Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 160km/h.
A tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch remained in effect for the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao and a
tropical storm watch remained in effect for Jamaica.
The centre of the storm, a category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, was about 97km east of Aruba. Felix was moving to the west-northwest at about 29km/h.
Felix was expected to continue gaining strength as it moves through the Caribbean and could become a major hurricane in the next 24 hours, the Hurricane Centre said.
The first hurricane of the season, Dean, turned into a monster Category 5 storm and killed at least 27 people as it roared across the Caribbean and Mexico late last month.
Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao were alerted to expect storm conditions within 24 hours.
There were no indications Felix would would reach the Gulf of Mexico, home to a third of US domestic crude oil and 15% of natural gas production. But long-range forecasts are
unreliable, the centre said.
Energy markets have watched tropical storms and hurricanes closely since the devastating Atlantic hurricane seasons of
2004 and 2005, when storms like Ivan, Katrina and Rita disrupted supplies.
The 2007 hurricane season, expected to be a busy one, is approaching its peak. Most storms hit from August 20 to
mid-October, with September 10 marking the peak of the season.
In August, Dean hammered Martinique, St Lucia and other islands in the Lesser Antilles chain. It blasted Jamaica and then struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before dissipating over the Mexican mainland.
- Reuters
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