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Hurricane Dean, Extremely Dangerous, Heads to Mexico

Monday, 20 August 2007

Satellite image of hurricane Dean

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Dean, with sustained winds at about 150 miles per hour and strengthening, bore down on Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula after cutting power lines, ripping off roofs and flooding streets in Jamaica, U.S. forecasters said.

Dean, an ``extremely dangerous'' storm, was centered about 125 miles (201 kilometers) southwest of Grand Cayman and about 385 miles east of Belize City just before 11 a.m. Miami time, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an online advisory. The storm was heading west at 21 mph, with landfall predicted early tomorrow along Mexico's Mayan Riviera, north of Belize and south of the resorts of Cancun and Cozumel.

Dean swept south of Jamaica yesterday after plowing between the islands of St. Lucia and Martinique two days earlier, when it was a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. The hurricane had strengthened to Category 4 by the time it reached Jamaica and may become a Category 5 storm, with winds of at least 155 mph, later today, the center said.

``There's a lot of significant wind damage,'' said Holly Inurreta, regional technical adviser for Latin America emergencies for relief organization Catholic Charities, in a telephone interview from Kingston, Jamaica. ``Our biggest concern right now is that the most affected areas are cut off.''

Read the rest of story at Bloomberg.com

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