Tropical Storm Ike upgraded to hurricane status

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Thursday, September 4, 2008

A satellite image of Hurricane Ike, taken today
Image: NASA.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has upgraded Tropical Storm Ike to hurricane status. The storm is the fifth hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season. The storm currently has maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. Ike is located 610 miles northeast of the Leeward Islands, and is currently tracking west-northwest at seventeen miles per hour.

It is currently too early too make precise predictions on the areas of land that will be hit by the hurricane, but the NHC reports that the hurricane may strike in the Southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands may be affected.

All individuals who may be impacted by this storm are urged to track its progress as it develops over the next few days.

The NHC has said that "Ike is an extremely dangerous category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale." The organization also said that "some weakening is forecast during the next day or so but Ike is expected to remain a powerful hurricane for the next several days."

Sources

• "Hurricane IKE Public Advisory". NHC/NOAA, September 4, 2008
• "Ike strengthens to dangerous Category Four hurricane". AFP, September 4, 2008
• "Hanna leaves 61 dead in Haiti, Ike now a hurricane". ABC News, September 4, 2008
  

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.