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 killing 10 people in Haiti, according to Reuters. The season's record-tying 21st storm, fueled by the warm waters of the northwest Caribbean Sea, strengthened with unprecedented speed into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity. Oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico were expected to escape this storm but Florida's orange groves were at risk. Early Wednesday, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane measured top sustained winds of 175 mph (280 kph), and logged a minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest observed in the Atlantic basin. That meant Wilma was briefly stronger than any Atlantic storm on record, including both Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana coast in September. Wilma's top winds weakened to 165 mph (270 kph) by midafternoon and forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said it could weaken further once it gets into the Gulf of Mexico. But Wilma still could "cause cause tremendous damage and loss of life if we're not careful," said Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. "The storm surge and the wave action will be tremendous with this hurricane, given the intensity and the size." It was expected to miss oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico but some energy companies evacuated nonessential workers from drilling platforms in the central and eastern Gulf as a precaution. --More 2253 Local Time 1953 GMT
