Hurricane Igor was strengthening quickly over the Atlantic Ocean today and on track to become a large and dangerous storm as it churned westward.
Igor, which became the fourth hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season late last night, posed no immediate threat to land or energy interests.
But the US National Hurricane Center said Igor was now a a Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, swirling toward the west with top winds of 105 miles (165 km) per hour.
It was expected to become a "major" Category 4 storm by sometime tomorrow, the Miami-based hurricane center said. A Category 4 hurricane is capable of causing catastrophic damage and has maximum sustained winds 155 miles (249 km) an hour.
At 11am (1500 GMT), Igor was located about 1,145 miles (1,840 km) east of the Caribbean's northern Leeward Islands.
Behind Igor, the hurricane center said a tropical depression off the southernmost Cape Verde islands was likely to become Tropical Storm Julia later today.
The hurricane center was also monitoring a low pressure system over the east-central Caribbean, which it said could develop into a tropical cyclone over the next couple of days.
Computer models have projected Igor would stay in the Atlantic for the coming days and not enter the Gulf of Mexico, where US oil and gas operations are clustered.
Veteran forecaster Jeff Masters said on his Weather Underground blog (www.wunderground.com) on Sunday that Igor may threaten Bermuda but had only a small chance of making landfall on the U.S. East Coast or in Canada.
Masters and other forecasters said it was still too early to make any definitive predictions about Igor's long-term fate, however.
The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season was predicted to be extremely active by most forecasters. Besides Igor, three hurricanes - Alex, Danielle and Earl - formed earlier in the season, the last two reaching Category 4 strength.
Several forecasters have said they expect the season to produce in all some five major hurricanes of Category 3 strength or stronger.
Reuters