Hurricane Fred Weakens in Atlantic

Hurricane Fred weakened on Wednesday after briefly flaring into a powerful Category 3 storm in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and was forecast to fizzle as it churned far away from land.

Fred’s sustained winds dropped to 105 miles per hour, making it a Category 2 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.

Earlier in the day Fred’s winds had whipped up to 120 miles per hour, making it the second “major” hurricane — Category 3 or higher on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale — of the 2009 Atlantic season, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Dry air and shearing winds were expected to weaken Fred further until it dissipated into a tropical depression by Monday night, forecasters said.

At 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday, the storm was about 645 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands and was moving northwest at about 10 mph, the hurricane center said.

Fred was expected to turn north in the next couple of days, forecasters said. The forecast track would keep it in the eastern Atlantic, far from the Gulf of Mexico, where U.S. oil and gas operations are clustered.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Hurricane