Hurricane Dean is expected to grow into a ferocious Category 5 storm as it passes Jamaica and nears Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the oil and gas rigs of the Gulf of Mexico after it smashed into several Caribbean islands, the US National Hurricane Center warned today.
With top sustained winds of 150 mph early today, the hurricane center said Dean was a Category 4 storm, the second-highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and capable of widespread destruction.
The hurricane center said it was expected to strengthen to Category 5, with top sustained winds in excess of 155 mph, before ploughing directly over Jamaica toward the Gulf, home to a third of US domestic crude oil and 15 per cent of natural gas production.
At 5 a.m. EDT today, the hurricane center said several consensus models saw the storm moving toward the northern Yucatan and northeastern Mexico, and the projected track was "nudged a little south of the previous forecast in best agreement with consensus models".
A hurricane warning likely will be posted for Jamaica later today, it said. The core of the storm will pass south of the Dominican Republic later on Saturday and south of Haiti in the evening, it said.
Dean roared through the narrow channel between the Lesser Antilles islands of St. Lucia and Martinique early yesterday, crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the warm Caribbean Sea.