Dean's a Five

Hurricane Dean, now churning over 86 degree water in the Caribbean, has spun up to a Category 5 - the top of the hurricane strength scale. That's one bad dude.

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurricane Dean strengthened into a monster Category 5 storm on Monday, threatening beach resorts on Mexico's Caribbean coast where thousands of tourists were huddled in makeshift shelters.

Dean, which has killed 11 people so far on Caribbean islands, packed howling winds of around 160 mph (256 kph), as it bore down on the Yucatan Peninsula, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Police ordered vehicles off the road and supermarket owners boarded up their windows on the "Mayan Riviera," a strip of beach resorts with bright white sands that is yet to fully recover from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

Category 5 is the strongest type of hurricane and can cause widespread damage. Dean was due to make landfall in a marshy area near Mexico's border with Belize early on Tuesday. The state government declared a night curfew in the area.

I went through a Category 3 storm (Celia) in 1970 and with gusts measured at 130 mph before the measuring device blew away, I can tell you that I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a Cat 5. The story of my experience in Hurricane Celia can be found here.


It looks like Dean will miss the U.S. and that's a blessing, though the areas of Mexico and Central America where it will strike probably have a lot of substandard housing and areas subject to mudslides and flash flooding. The death toll may actually be far greater than if the storm had hit southern Texas.