via Yahoo!:
Category 4 Hurricane Ike fiercer as Hanna strengthens By Joseph Guyler Delva
Thu Sep 4, 5:06 AM ET
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike strengthened rapidly into an fiercely dangerous Category 4 hurricane in the open Atlantic on Wednesday and Tropical Storm Hanna intensified to a lesser degree as it swirled over the Bahamas toward the southeast U.S. Coast.
Ike posed no immediate threat to land but strengthened explosively, growing in the space of a few hours from a tropical storm to an intense Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.
Ike had top sustained winds near 145 mph (230 kph) as it swept across the open waters of the west-central Atlantic 550 miles (885 km) northeast of the Leeward Islands, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving west-northwest near 17 mph (28 kph).
It was forecast to head for the southern Bahamas early next week but it was too early to tell whether it would threaten land, the forecasters said.
It was also too soon to say whether Ike would threaten U.S. oil and natural gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080904/us_nm/storm_hanna_dc
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