Hurricane Barrels Toward Florida

Racing westward, Hurricane Debby skirted the coast of Puerto Rico on Tuesday, inflicting little damage but setting a course that could produce a more powerful storm--and a collision with the U.S. mainland--later this week.

With 1,000 miles between Debby’s position and the south Florida coast, forecasters were uncertain whether the fourth named storm of the 2000 season would come ashore near here, pass to the south or be deflected out to sea by atmospheric forces in the making.

Still, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, advised residents of the Gulf and eastern coasts to listen up.

“The main message: There is a developing hurricane to the southeast, so act accordingly,” he said.

Heading past the Dominican Republic and into the Bahamas, Debby is expected to slow down and gather strength as it feeds on warm Caribbean waters--the fuel of tropical cyclones.

Debby, the first Atlantic storm of the year to make landfall, remained a minor tempest late Tuesday with sustained winds of 75 mph carrying it barely over the hurricane threshold. The storm brushed by the British Virgin Islands, apparently causing scant damage while dumping 4 to 6 inches of rain. Debby also passed lightly by the northern Leeward Islands--Barbuda, St. Martin and Anguilla.

On St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the sprawling oil refinery operated jointly by American and Venezuelan interests partially shut down in advance of the storm. And in Puerto Rico, schools were closed, many businesses dismissed employees early, and tourists scrambled for the last flights out.

But as the eye of Debby blew past about 45 miles north of the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan, on Tuesday afternoon, the weather was described as more cloudy than stormy.

“We’re expecting a lot of rain, and with that we always get flooding,” said Maria Dolores Pizarro, an attorney working from her San Juan home.

“But that is usual, so we’re ready.”

Pizarro also remarked on the “sense of calm, and the helpfulness of neighbors” as Puerto Ricans prepared their homes for an assault by high winds and rain.

“There is a sharing at times like these,” she said. “People seem more sensible.”

The Pentagon prepared for the storm by moving 10 ships and two submarines that had been conducting battle exercises off Vieques, a small island on Puerto Rico’s eastern tip. The ships were sent 300 miles south of Puerto Rico on Monday.

Shelters were opened in the Dominican Republic, a mountainous nation where heavy rains can trigger deadly mudslides. More than 100 deaths, mostly from flooding, were reported there after the passage of Hurricane Georges in 1998.

Late Tuesday, Debby was centered north of the Dominican Republic, and the storm was moving west-northwest at about 20 mph.

Hurricane warnings were posted for the southeastern Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. The Cuban government also issued a hurricane watch for that island’s northern coast.

Some hurricane center computer models predicted that the storm would follow a track into south Florida, perhaps rolling into the Miami area sometime Friday. But other models suggested that Debby could go south of Cuba, or even north of Florida.