MIAMI - Hurricane Felix ripped across the warm waters of the Caribbean early Monday towards Honduras and Belize after damaging homes and power lines in Grenada as it gained "potentially catastrophic" class-five strength.
The storm was so powerful that it tossed around a US "hurricane hunter" data gathering airplane and forced it to abort its mission, the Miami Herald reported.
At 8 am (1200 GMT,) the center of Felix was located some 260 miles (425 kilometers) south Kingston, Jamaica and about the same distance east of Cabo Gracias a Dios, which is located on Nicaragua's border with Honduras.
The storm was moving westward at about 21 miles (33 kilometers) per hour, packing winds of 165 miles (270 kilometers) per hour on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with higher gusts, the Florida-based National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane was on track to hit the coasts of extreme northeastern Nicaragua and northeastern Honduras early on Tuesday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. Felix then is expected to make landfall in Belize and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula Wednesday.
No casualties were reported since Felix became the second hurricane of the Atlantic storm season on Saturday, though one person was reported missing in northern Venezuela.
In just 15 hours on Sunday, Felix jumped from a Category Two storm with winds at 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour to a rare Category Five hurricane, the most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The speed at which Felix reached maximum strength was one of the fastest ever recorded, Hurricane Center specialists said.
Felix was so powerful that one of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 'hurricane hunter' airplanes was caught in a rapid updraft-downdraft cycle as it gathered data, the Miami Herald reported.
The violent cycle placed four times the weight of gravity on those aboard the plane.
"Four Gs can put a fair strain on the aircraft, and it also got some very heavy hail that can rip the paint off the plane," Hurricane Center forecaster James Franklin told the newspaper.
The airplane, a modified Orion P-3 that normally carries 14 people, was ordered back to its base at Saint Croix, one of the US Virgin Islands, Franklin said.
The storm, nourished by the warm Caribbean ocean, was expected to maintain its strength as it followed the general path that another Category Five storm, Hurricane Dean, took just last week.
Though extremely powerful, Felix "has a very small wind field," the Hurricane Center said.
"Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 45 kilometers (30 miles) from the center, and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 185 kilometers (115 miles)," the Hurricane Center said.
The Honduran government early Monday warned officials along its Caribbean coast to prepare for the hurricane. Hurricane conditions "are also possible over extreme northeastern Nicaragua," the Hurricane Center said.
In Venezuela civil defense officials said a person went missing as beaches were evacuated in Puerto Cabello, 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Caracas, where Felix generated high winds, heavy rains and up to three meter (10 foot) swells.
There were no immediate reports of damage as the storm skimmed just north of the Paraguana peninsula, site of Venezuela's main oil refineries.
Meanwhile Jamaica, which lay well to the north of Felix's track, was under a tropical storm watch as it prepared to hold elections Monday, already postponed from one week ago by Hurricane Dean.
Warnings for Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao were discontinued as Felix swiped the popular tourist destinations in the Netherlands Antilles after wreaking some damage in Grenada, ripping roofs, downing power lines and knocking radio and TV stations off the air.
Last week, Dean, also reaching category five, swept through the Caribbean with severe winds and rains, leaving a wide swath of damage and a death toll of 30 from Martinique to Mexico.
09/03/2007 13:35 GMT