By DPA
Washington : Hurricane Felix has intensified into the most powerful category of storm, threatening Central America and the Caribbean, US forecasters said.
The US National Hurricane Centre in Miami upgraded the storm to category five Sunday and said it would continue to pick up steam at a rapid pace. Warm weather speeded the storm’s quick rise to a major hurricane from a tropical storm Saturday.
Felix threatened Jamaica and Grand Cayman, where tropical storm conditions were possible within 36 hours.
Felix had already brought heavy rainfall to the Dutch Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, but passed north of the islands, sparing them significant damage.
The storm had average wind speeds of 270 km an hour with stronger gusts and was located 625 km southeast of Kingston, Jamaica at 8 p.m. (0000 GMT).
Felix was travelling at around 30 km an hour, taking aim at Belize, but with a landfall possible in the entire region from Nicaragua in the south to the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan in the north.
Its path mirrored hurricane Mittch, which killed thousands of people in Honduras and Nicaragua nine years ago.
Felix follows Dean as the second named hurricane in the region this season. Dean ploughed across the Lesser Antilles, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico – first slamming into the Yucutan Peninsula as a strong category five storm before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and again hitting the country Wednesday as a weaker category two storm. It left 28 people dead.