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Keith gets stronger, aims at gulfBy MIKE BRASSFIELD © St. Petersburg Times, published October 1, 2000 It's too early to tell where Hurricane Keith will eventually end up, but Saturday did not bring good news. Forecasters became more certain that Keith will move into the Gulf of Mexico this week, and that it will do so as a powerful and dangerous hurricane. But first, the rapidly intensifying storm is expected to hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Keith spent most of Saturday sitting in one spot and gathering power. It was almost stationary in the northwestern Caribbean Sea, "over a tremendous reservoir of warm water," said forecaster Lixion Avila of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Keith strengthened from a tropical storm Friday to a Category 3 hurricane Saturday night, with a well-organized eye and sustained winds of 115 mph. Today, the storm is expected to resume its slow northwesterly march toward the Mexican resorts of Cancun and Cozumel. Forecasters said it should reach land late tonight or early Monday as a Category 3 hurricane, with winds capable of ripping up trees and damaging buildings. "It could be even stronger than that. Category 4 is certainly a possibility," said Christopher Burr, chief of the Hurricane Center's forecasting branch. "It's an intense storm. It looks as good as any hurricane I've seen in a long time." Already on Saturday, heavy rain and high winds were lashing at the eastern Yucatan, Belize and northern Honduras as storm surges made rivers overflow and flooded thousands of homes. Keith is expected to punch its way into the southern Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday. "Then it's very, very uncertain which direction it'll take," Burr said. It should weaken while passing over land but should regain power over water. Long-range computer models suggest that Keith may become an even stronger hurricane in the gulf, Avila said. At 11 p.m. Saturday, Keith was centered near 18.1 north latitude, 87.1 west longitude, about 80 miles southeast of Chetumal, Mexico. Hurricane-force winds extended 35 miles from its core, and tropical-storm-force winds extended 140 miles. Two other tropical systems are still churning through the Atlantic. Hurricane Isaac, spinning away into the cold North Atlantic waters, is irrelevant. It was expected to lose tropical-storm characteristics today. But Joyce may bear watching. Joyce was barely a tropical storm Saturday as it headed toward the Windward Islands. It raised storm warnings in Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada -- islands it should pass over today. But it is expected to regain hurricane strength by Tuesday as it advances into the Caribbean, passing south of Puerto Rico and Haiti. At 11 p.m. Saturday, Joyce was centered near 10.8 north latitude, 58.3 west longitude, about 150 miles east of Tobago. It was moving west-northwest at 13 mph. It was poorly organized, and its sustained winds were at 45 mph. "However, we have seen a number of relatively insignificant-looking systems in which rather strong winds were found," said hurricane forecaster Richard Pasch.
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