CARIBBEAN ISLANDS ON HURRICANE ALERT.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Tropical Storm tropical storm n. A cyclonic storm having winds ranging from approximately 48 to 121 kilometers (30 to 75 miles) per hour. tropical storm Bertha raced Saturday toward the Caribbean, threatening hundreds of people still living with tarpaulins on roofs damaged by last year's storms. On St. Thomas, residents eager for storm supplies had traffic backed up for miles around the island's main shopping area, Tutu. One supermarket ran out of bottled water. People loaded shopping carts with batteries, matches, propane, lanterns and anything they felt they did not have enough of when Hurricane Marilyn Hurricane Marilyn was the fifteenth tropical depression and thirteenth named storm of the unusually busy 1995 Atlantic hurricane season, following closely on the heels of Hurricane Luis. Hurricane Marilyn was the worst storm to hit the Virgin Islands since Hurricane Hugo of 1989. struck in September. A strip of islands from the British and U.S. Virgin Islands south and east to Dominica were put under hurricane watch as Bertha gathered speed and strength, advancing on the Lesser Antilles Lesser Antilles: see West Indies. with sustained winds near 50 mph, the National Hurricane Center The U.S. National Hurricane Center, located at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, is the division of National Weather Service's Tropical Prediction Center responsible for tracking and predicting the likely behavior of tropical depressions, tropical storms and in Miami said. At 8 p.m., the center of the storm was 570 miles east-southeast of Guadeloupe. Bertha threatened to turn into a Category 1 hurricane - one that causes minimal damage - by Monday morning, when it would be about 130 miles southeast of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, the center said. Two hurricane aircraft in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, were scheduled to fly into the eye of the storm early today to record more precise information on the system. While tropical storms can be erratic, changing direction and strength within hours, forecasters said Bertha was following the same trajectory as Marilyn and Hurricane Hugo, which devastated dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. Puerto Rico in 1989. The National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (IPA: [saŋ hwaŋ]) (from the Spanish San Juan Bautista, "Saint John the Baptist") is the capital and largest municipality on Puerto Rico. , posted hurricane watches for Antigua, Barbuda, Nevis, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, Dominica, Dutch St. Maarten and the Virgin Islands. The French government added watches for its islands - Guadeloupe, St. Barthelemy and its portion of St. Martin. Most of those islands were hit hard last year when Marilyn and Hurricane Luis stormed through within days of each other, destroying thousands of homes. Many people have yet to make repairs because of shortages of materials, labor and money, making them especially vulnerable to even low-grade storms. Eighty percent of homes on St. Thomas were damaged or destroyed last year, the worst storm season in 60 years. Fewer than half have been repaired and blue tarpaulins still patch many roofs. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion