Wilma Leaves Cancun in Shambles, Heading for Florida in Record Hurricane Season

From AP:

KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Wilma churned toward Florida on Sunday, picking up speed "like a rocket" as tens of thousands of residents were ordered to flee from vulnerable islands and coastal areas.

The southern half of Florida's peninsula was under a hurricane warning Sunday in anticipation of Wilma, a Category 2 storm with 100 mph sustained wind. Landfall was expected around dawn Monday.

Tornados were possible over parts of the state through Monday and powerful storm-surge flooding was expected on the southwest coast.

About 160,000 people in the state were under mandatory evacuation orders, including the entire population of the Florida Keys island chain. There was no way of knowing exactly how many actually left, but it appeared only about 20 percent of the 78,000 Keys residents fled, said Billy Wagner, senior Monroe County emergency management director.

"If they don't get out of there, they're going to be in deep trouble," Wagner said.

Evacuation orders also covered barrier islands and coastal areas in Collier and Lee counties, such as Fort Myers Beach, Marco Island, Sanibel and parts of Naples.

"The time of preparing is rapidly moving into time of action," Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate said.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, predicted Wilma would dramatically pick up speed later Sunday, and its top wind speed would increase.

"It's really going to take off like a rocket," he said. "It's going to start moving like 20 mph."

Wilma had been joined by Tropical Storm Alpha, which formed Saturday off the Dominican Republic as the record 22nd named storm for the Atlantic season, before weakening to a tropical depression. It was the first time forecasters exhausted the regular list of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet for labels in almost 60 years of naming storms. The previous record of 21 tropical storms and hurricanes had stood since 1933.

Alpha "is not going to be a threat to the United States," Mayfield said. "I want to make that very clear."

By 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Wilma had maximum sustained wind near 100 mph. It was centered about 240 miles west-southwest of Key West and was moving toward the northeast at about 12 mph. Hurricane-force wind of at least 74 mph extended up to 70 miles out from the center, and wind blowing at tropical storm-force reached outward up to 200 miles, the hurricane center said.

Before moving back out to sea, Wilma pummeled Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for two days with screaming winds and torrential rains that flooded the nation's resort coastline. Authorities said at least three people died in Mexico during the storm, which earlier killed 13 people in Jamaica and Haiti.

In Florida, tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph were expected in the Keys and the southwestern part of the state by Sunday evening, and in Miami and other Atlantic coast cities around midnight. The center of Wilma should make landfall on Florida's southwest coast as a Category 1 or 2 hurricane around sunrise Monday, forecasters said.

From Reuters:

Hurricane Wilma bore down on Florida on Sunday after devastating Mexico's Caribbean resorts with flood water and wild winds that smashed thousands of homes and killed at least seven people.

Dazed tourists waded through knee-deep water in the streets of Cancun, one of the world's top beach spots, to seek food and water after three nights in damp shelters without electricity.

"People are starting to get sick. Some of the elderly people are becoming ill. There is water but they are telling us to conserve it," said American Doug Ruby, a computer security programmer.
Troops drove around handing out food packages but luxury beachfront hotels on a long spit of sand were cut off by water since Friday after the sea roared hundreds of yards (meters) inland.

Relentless howling winds and torrential rain ruined homes, hotels and stores all along the "Maya Riviera," which pulls in millions of tourists with its white sand beaches, coral-filled seas and nearby Mayan ruins.

"It looks like a war zone out here," said British tourist Thomas Hall as he glanced down a flooded avenue filled with collapsed electricity towers, fallen trees and debris.

Wilma, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, crawled slowly across Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, before finally heading out into the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday on its way to southern Florida.