Bermuda issues storm watch for Hurricane Katia
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MIAMI (Reuters)—Bermuda issued a tropical storm watch Tuesday as forecasters warned that large and powerful Hurricane Katia could pass close enough for residents of the mid-Atlantic island to feel its outer squalls.
With top winds of 120 miles per hour, Katia was a "major" Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.
The center of the storm was 370 miles south of the British colony of Bermuda, forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Katia was moving northwest and was expected to pass between Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast on Wednesday and Thursday.
The core of the storm was expected to stay over water, but Katia was more than 400 miles wide and its outer gusts and thunderstorms could reach Bermuda, forecasters warned.
Bermuda's government issued a tropical storm watch for the island's 70,000 residents. Despite its small size and isolated location, the territory is a global reinsurance hub.
"Tropical storm-force winds, especially in gusts, are possible on Bermuda through Thursday," the U.S. forecasters said.
Katia was generating massive swells and potentially deadly rip currents that threatened beaches all along the eastern United States, Bermuda, the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles of the northern Caribbean, the hurricane center forecasters said.
After passing midway between Bermuda and the Carolinas on Thursday, Katia was expected to weaken and curve away from the United States on a path that posed no further threat to any land.
