NEW YORK // Hurricane Ike will mushroom into a powerful Category 3 storm as it slowly swirls west across the Gulf of Mexico before slamming into the oil-rich Texas Coast today, the US National Hurricane Center forecasted. Ike is still a Category 2 storm with winds near 160 kph but is expected to strengthen into a Category 3 storm with winds of 179 to 209 kph within 36 hours before striking the Texas Coast early Saturday local time.
The center of the storm was located about 710km east-south-east of Corpus Christi, Texas, and about 756km east-south-east of Galveston, Texas, the NHC said in its 2pm EDT report. The weather models show Ike could hit anywhere from the central Texas coast to the Louisiana border. Energy traders watch for storms that could enter the Gulf of Mexico and threaten US oil and natural gas infrastructure along the coast.
Commodities traders likewise watch storms that could hit agriculture crops such as citrus and cotton in Florida and other states along the Gulf Coast to Texas. Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the NHC estimated an area of disturbed weather, including some of the remnants of Tropical Storm Josephine about 563 km east of the southeastern Bahamas, had a less than 20 per cent chance of developing over the next 48 hours.
Half of the weather models forecast the system would move northwest without threatening any land over the next five days. The other half showed the system turning west and passing over the Bahamas. *AP
