It's in the Caribbean and tearing through some of it's islands, but not Roatan. Roatan sits mostly outside the zone known for Hurricanes. "They always go north of us. We'll get some rain and wind only....but I doubt VERY much that it will hit us. It's already almost at 16 degrees. We sit at 16.2 so it would have to come directly WEST to hit us and it's going West NW. We're not worried here at all." - TJ Lynch, 10+ years now on the island, knows his weather.
Click here for a GREAT hurricane tracker
[play with the different years and notice how hurricanes travel in the Caribbean and upswing past Roatan!]
August 17th 1:00PM PST from MSNBC.com
CASTRIES, St. Lucia - Hurricane Dean strengthened into a Category 3 storm and tore through the eastern Caribbean on Friday, ripping the roofs from a hospital and homes, and flooding buildings with rain and seawater. A 62-year-old man drowned — the storm’s first death.
With 125 mph winds, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season was expected to gain power over the warm waters of the Caribbean, hit Jamaica on Sunday and climb to Category 4 status before clipping Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It was projected to steer into the Gulf of Mexico by Wednesday, threatening the U.S.-Mexico border area.
Residents on the French island of Martinique reported landslides and said scores of people were left homeless. Buildings across this eastern Caribbean island lost their roofs, often made of corrugated metal. With utility poles down, the power company turned off electricity on the island to prevent electrocutions.
“We don’t have a roof...everything is exposed. We tried to save what we could,” said Josephine Marcelus in Morne Rouge, a town in northern Martinique. “We sealed ourselves in one room, praying that the hurricane stops blowing over Martinique.”
St. Lucia state radio reported the capital was flooded and cluttered with wind-blown debris. Boulders from a sea wall were shoved onto roads by the force of storm surges. A boat sat in the road, lifted from the sea by the storm.
A 62-year-old man was swept away in a rain-swollen river while attempting to retrieve a cow, in the storm’s first death, police said. The eye of Dean passed between St. Lucia and the French island of Martinique, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
At 1:45 p.m. ET, Dean was centered about 175 miles west of Martinique and was moving west at about 22 mph.
Dominica, which lies north of Martinique, had minor flooding, a few downed fences and trees and battered banana crops — one of the island’s main exports — but it appeared Dean had not caused much damage.
“I did not sleep at all last night and was a little worried that the roof of my house would be blown off with all that wind,” one Roseau resident, Gwenie Moses, said as she checked her small tin-roofed house for damage. “Thank God it did not.”