MIAMI: Hurricane Wilma became the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record yesterday as it churned towards western Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on a track towards Florida, having already killed 10 people in Haiti.

The season's record-tying 21st storm, fuelled by the warm waters of the northwest Caribbean Sea, strengthened alarmingly into a Category 5 hurricane, the top rank on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity.

A US Air Force reconnaissance plane measured maximum sustained winds of 280 kilometres per hour, with higher gusts, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

The plane also recorded a minimum pressure of 882 millibars, the lowest value ever observed in the Atlantic basin. That meant Wilma was stronger than any storm on record, including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August, and Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana coast in September.

Wilma has killed up to 10 people who died in mudslides in deforested and impoverished Haiti after several days of heavy rain, civil protection officials said.

The storm was expected to bring rainfall of up to 64 centimetres to mountainous parts of Cuba, and up to 38 centimetres to Jamaica and to the Cayman Islands, a wealthy British colony south of Cuba. Honduras and Mexico could expect up to 30 centimetres of rain, the hurricane centre said.

By 8 am EDT (1200 GMT), the hurricane was about 550 kilometres southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.

Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying the record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.

The storm was moving west-northwest at 13 kilometres per hour. A turn towards the northwest was expected in the next 24 hours. Once in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, Wilma was expected to make a sharp turn to the northeast, towards Florida.

Wilma was not expected to threaten New Orleans or Mississippi, where Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,200 people and caused more than US$30 billion in insured damage.

It was also expected to miss the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico still reeling from Katrina and Rita.

Wilma was expected to weaken before reaching Florida. Nevertheless, officials in the Florida Keys, a vulnerable chain of low-lying islands connected to mainland Florida by a single road, warned residents and tourists to take the storm seriously.

(China Daily 10/20/2005 page8)