Hurricane Ike will mushroom into a large and dangerous Category 3 storm as it approaches the oil-rich northeast Texas coast early on Saturday, Reuters quoted the U.S. National Hurricane Center as forecasting today. Ike is still a Category 2 storm with winds near 105 miles per hour, but is expected to strengthen into a Category 3 storm with winds of 111 to 130 mph before striking the Texas coast. The center of the storm was located about 365 miles (587 km) east of Corpus Christi, Texas, and about 230 miles (370 km) southeast of Galveston, Texas, the NHC said in its 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) report. Energy traders watch storms that could enter the Gulf of Mexico and threaten U.S. oil and natural gas infrastructure along the coast. Commodities traders likewise watch storms that could hit agriculture crops such as citrus and cotton in Florida and other states along the Gulf Coast to Texas. Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the NHC estimated an area of disturbed weather, including some of the remnants of Tropical Storm Josephine about 350 miles east of the southeastern Bahamas, had a less than 20 percent chance of developing over the next 48 hours. The weather models forecast the disturbed weather would remain out of the Gulf of Mexico and likely pose no threat to land over the next five days as it slowly moves toward the U.S. Southeast.
