The sixth storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season dumped torrential rain on the Dominican Republic and vulnerable Haiti on Saturday and was expected to become a hurricane threatening Cuba and the United States, US forecasters said.
A 34-year-old Dominican woman died and two young nephews, aged 13 and 5, were missing after being swept away when flood waters raged through a gully around 86 miles (140 km) east of Santa Domingo and engulfed their truck, the Caribbean country's emergency operations center said. Tropical Storm Fay, the sixth cyclone of what experts predict will be an unusually busy six-month hurricane season, formed on Friday as it came ashore in the Dominican Republic.
By 8 am EDT (1200 GMT) on Saturday, its center was located around 35 mt at 14 miles per hour (22 km per hour), the US National Hurricane Center said. The storm's forecast track had also shifted a little to the south and west, meaning it would spend more time than initially expected over the warm waters that provide tropical cyclones with fuel, and it was now expected to strengthen into a hurricane as it approached the southern Cuban coast.
Tropical storms become hurricanes when their top sustained winds reach at least 74 mph (119 kph). The hurricane center's official forecast predicted the storm's winds would reach 90 mph (146 kph), making it a strong Category 1 hurricane on the 5-step Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity, just before it struck the Florida Panhandle later next week.