Hurricane Ike

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Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike causes destruction and pass the Coastline of the United States Hurricane Ike is crossing Cuba after smashing into the northeast of the country with winds of 205 kilometers (125 miles) per hour, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

In the Florida Keys, where the storm may pass on Tuesday, many residents took a wait-and-see approach to evacuating Sunday, perhaps a harbinger of attitudes to come from Gulf Coast residents returning from an arduous evacuation and already showing signs of "hurricane fatigue."The price of crude oil surged more than $2 a barrel as the approach of Hurricane Ike delayed the restart of production from the Gulf of Mexico.

Royal Dutch Shell evacuated workers from Gulf platforms or kept staff onshore who were moved from the path of Hurricane Gustav last month.

Ike is currently moving through the Bahamas and is likely to squeeze through the Florida Strait - between Cuba and Florida during Tuesday and Wednesday NZT. Ike has about 3 possible courses:

1) He'll move over Cuba. This would seriously eat away at Ike's power but would be a double blow to Cuba who's still mopping up from Gustav - which passed over as a Cat 4 storm last week.

2) Ike will move through the Florida Strait, brushing the northern coastline of Cuba. Remaining over the open waters would ensure he stayed around the Category 3 or 4 mark - seriously impacting both Cuba and southern Florida.

Ike is currently moving through the Bahamas and is likely to squeeze through the Florida Strait

3) Ike will track further north across the Florida Keys - perhaps sparing Cuba from the worth, but causing a big blow for the this major tourist detination. For those who don't know, the Florida Keys is a narrow band of islands that tracks south west from the southern tip of Florida. These islands are just a metre or two above sea level and it doesn't take much of storm surge to put them completely under water.

On Florida's Key West, tourists and residents alike have been ordered to evacuate.

Ike, a dangerous Category 3 storm, may threaten New Orleans, the city swamped in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1500 people and caused massive damage on the US Gulf Coast, the Associated Press reported.

Ike had earlier ripped through the southern Bahamas and added to the misery and death toll in storm-battered Haiti.

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