Hurricane Bill develops
Hurricane Bill has developed into a Category 4
Bill, the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2009 season, was upgraded on Wednesday morning to a Category Four major hurricane.
As Bill tracked west-north-westwards around 500 miles east of the Leeward Islands, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said that the storm had strengthened further overnight and was producing sustained wind speeds of around 135 miles per hour.
This put Bill at the lower end of Category Four of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, but with further strengthening expected.
Forecasters expect Bill to make a gradual turn to the north-east during the next couple of days, with its dangerous core passing well to the north-east of the Leeward Islands.
The current forecast track of Bill also suggests the storm will pass to the west of Bermuda at the weekend, although the National Hurricane Center advised residents of both Bermuda and the Leeward Islands to monitor Bill's progress.
Even if Bill does continue to track safely over open ocean, the large sea swells generated by the hurricane are expected to affect Bermuda and the south-eastern coast of the United States by the weekend.
The last major hurricane to affect Bermuda was Fabian, which struck in early September 2003. Like Bill in 2009, Fabian was the first major Atlantic hurricane of the 2003 season, and similarly formed from a tropical wave near the Cape Verde islands in the eastern Atlantic.
