Hurricane Wilma became the fiercest Atlantic hurricane ever seen as it churned toward western Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on Wednesday, and threatened densely populated Florida after having already killed 10 people in Haiti.
The season's record-tying 21st storm, fuelled by the warm waters of the north-west Caribbean Sea, intensified with unexpected and unprecedented speed into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity.
A US Air Force reconnaissance plane measured maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (280 kph), with higher gusts, the US National Hurricane Center said.
The plane also recorded a minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest value ever observed in the Atlantic basin. The previous record was for Hurricane Gilbert at 888 millibars, which hit Mexico in 1988. That meant Wilma was stronger than any storm on record, including both Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana coast in September.
Authorities in the Keys told tourists to start leaving on Wednesday. The islands' 80,000 residents would be told to evacuate on Thursday, they said.
Wilma's rains have already killed up to 10 people in mudslides in deforested and impoverished Haiti, civil protection officials said.
The storm, which boasted an unusually tight eye of just 2 to 4 nautical miles (3.7 to 7.4 km), was expected to bring rainfall of up to 25 inches (64 cm) to mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 15 inches (38 cm) to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British colony south of Cuba. Honduras and Mexico could expect up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, the hurricane center said.
Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying a record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.
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