Strengthening Gustav heads for Jamaica

[villager]

Source: Reuters

Strengthening Gustav heads for Jamaica

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Gustav strengthened Thursday morning as it headed towards Jamaica, and the system was expected to regain hurricane status later today, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.

At 8 a.m. EDT, Gustav was expected to be located about 80 miles east of Kingston, Jamaica, and about 170 miles south of Guantanamo, Cuba, with maximum sustained winds up to 70 miles per hour, just shy of the 74 mph required for a Category One hurricane.

The system was moving very little but was expected to head west-southwest, then turn west later today as it passed very close to Jamaica. The government of Jamaica issued a hurricane warning.

Most computer weather models still showed the storm heading in a northwesterly direction, skirting the southern coast of Cuba, then entering the central Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.

While extended hurricane track projections are not always accurate, Gustav's current path could take it through key oil and gas producing areas off the coast of Louisiana or Texas on Monday and Tuesday as a powerful Category 3 storm with winds of about 115 mph.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2541891320080828

[Purveyor]

1. Now with Hannah's formation in the Atlantic, the US could be hit with 2 major

hurricanes within the same week.

[daggahead]

2. Gustav, Hannah ...

and two more formations in the eastern Atlantic that have decent chance of becoming tropical storms.

[mikelgb]

3. insert witty, but innapropriate joke about hurricane and olympic gold runners