Tropical Storm Claudette soaks Florida coast
MIAMI (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Claudette drenched the Florida panhandle but spared the U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil patch on Sunday while two other cyclones, Ana and Bill, raced through the Atlantic Ocean toward the Caribbean islands.
The six-month Atlantic hurricane season got off to a slow start with no storms in the first 2-1/2 months but exploded this weekend as three formed in just over a day.
Claudette, the third storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was heading northwest in the Gulf just a few miles (kilometres) offshore late on Sunday in an area east of the heaviest concentration of U.S. energy platforms, which stretch along the coast from Mobile Bay, Alabama, to Brownsville, Texas.
The Gulf is home to almost half of U.S. refinery capacity, a quarter of oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output. Oil companies were monitoring the storm but had not shut down production.
"Gulf operations are normal," BP Plc spokesman Daron Beaudo said in a statement. "Nothing to report."
Claudette's winds strengthened to 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres per hour) as it neared the Florida panhandle and its center was located about 70 miles southeast of Pensacola, Florida, at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Claudette dropped up to 5 inches of rain along the Florida coast and forecasters said it could push a 3 to 5 foot (1 to 1.5 meter) storm surge ashore.
THREAT FROM BILL
The threat to the small islands of the eastern Caribbean eased on Sunday as Tropical Storm Ana faded to a tropical depression and could be downgraded further in the near future.
Tropical storm watches, alerting residents to expect bad weather within 36 hours, were in effect from the Dominican Republic to the French island of Guadeloupe.
Ana was about 25 miles southeast of Guadeloupe and its top winds had dropped to about 35 mph, the Miami-based hurricane center said.
The bigger threat could come from Bill, which forecasters expected to whip up into a "major" Category 3 hurricane, with winds of more than 110 mph, by Friday. Hurricanes of Category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale are the most destructive type.
Some computer models suggested Bill could reach Category 4, with winds of more than 130 mph.
Bill's sustained winds increased on Sunday to 70 mph, just short of hurricane strength, but it was still 1,320 miles east of the Lesser Antilles islands. It was headed to the west-northwest at about 20 mph, the hurricane center said.
On its most likely track, Bill would be well north of the northernmost Caribbean islands, headed in the general direction of the U.S. East Coast, striking by Friday, forecasters said.
The busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, is from about the last week of August to mid-October.
Forecasters expected this season to be a bit less active than recent years, due in part to the formation of an El Nino event in the eastern Pacific. The warm-water phenomenon tends to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic by increasing wind shear, which can tear apart nascent hurricanes.
(Additional reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston, editing by Philip Barbara)
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE57F14V20090817?sp=true
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