HURRICANE BILL STRENGTHENS

The hurricane was moving in a north-westerly direction, and on its current track is projected to turn north and largely miss the US coastline. An Air Force reserve hurricane hunter plane that flew into the Atlantic storm indicated "that Bill has strengthened and maximum sustained winds have increased to near 125 MPH," the center said in an interim advisory. That made Bill a Category 3 Hurricane on the Simpson hurricane scale. The Miami-based Hurricane Center said earlier that at 2100 GMT Tuesday, the hurricane was located about 635 miles (1,025 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands and heading west-northwestward toward the US mainland at nearly 16 mph (26 kph).

The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and ends on November 30.The hurricane's projected track is in the Atlantic, "well to the northeast" of the Caribbean's Leeward Islands. The Hurricane Center's extended forecast puts the far northeastern US coastline on the eastern edge of Bill's broad "cone of uncertainty" by Sunday. Tropical Storm Claudette, which blew up in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday and lashed Florida resorts with strong winds and heavy rain, weakened Monday to a tropical depression as it moved across the southern United States.

Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the season, also lost its punch as it moved quickly at maximum winds of 34 mph (55 kph) across the Caribbean, with all tropical storm watches discontinued in the region. In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Guillermo was moving northwest at about 20 mph (33 kph) at 0200 GMT Wednesday. A day after weakening rapidly from a hurricane, the storm was 570 miles (917 km) northeast of Hilo, Hawaii, according to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center