Wilma may hit Florida by Sunday night
Storm off Mexico's Yucatan could intensify
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Wilma was bearing down on Mexico as forecasters Thursday put the Category 4 storm on track to hit Florida on Sunday.
"Believe me, this is still a very, very powerful hurricane," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "Don't minimize this just because it's no longer a Category 5."
On Wednesday, the hurricane was a powerful Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale with sustained winds peaking at 175 mph. (Watch latest update on Wilma -- 1:45)
Wilma's projected track could take it anywhere between Tampa, Florida, and the Florida Keys, Mayfield said.
The best guess is that Wilma will hit somewhere in southwest Florida on Sunday afternoon or evening, he said.
Wilma is churning slowly toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula with top winds strengthening slightly Thursday afternoon to near 150 mph (240 kph). The storm was expected to graze the peninsula before veering off toward Florida.
In the southwestern Cuban fishing village of Batabano, a low-lying area particularly vulnerable to flooding, residents did what they could to stave off Wilma's wrath.
One man used a piece of rope to secure the roof of his home against oncoming winds.
Cuban authorities are evacuating 500,000 residents from its westernmost provinces.
By Thursday afternoon more than 222,000 residents had been removed from their homes, many of which are falling apart after Hurricanes Dennis and Rita hit Cuba this year.
Cuba has issued a hurricane watch for the provinces of Matanzas westward through Pinar del Rio and for the Isle of Youth, according to the National Hurricane Center. (Caribbean braces)
The hurricane center said Cuba could get anywhere from 10 to 20 inches (25 to 51 centimeters) of rain from Wilma, with some areas getting socked with as much as 40 inches. (Watch Cuban hurricane preps -- 2:09)
Floridians watch
To the north, along Florida's southwest coast, authorities in Lee County were tracking the storm closely.
"We're going to meet this afternoon with our county emergency management director," said Chuck Rinehart, police chief in Punta Gorda, a coastal community hit hard by Hurricane Charley in 2004.
"We're mainly in a monitoring phase now to determine the direction that the storm is going to take and [a decision on whether to order an evacuation] will be made later this afternoon or maybe tomorrow," he said Thursday morning.
'We are staying'
Despite still-damaged property from Charley and lingering fears, some members of the community plan to ride out Wilma.
"We are staying," said resident Sarah Borden. "It's so hard to know because if you rush off now and it may not come, you've wasted all that time, and then even if you go, you worry about people who are left behind and your house. So we will stay."
The slowing storm prompted authorities in the Florida Keys to postpone from Thursday to Friday a mandatory evacuation order for residents, according to the Monroe County Office of Emergency Management.
The Navy evacuated aircraft from Naval Air Station Key West, including 26 F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and a cargo plane. The aircraft were headed to bases in the northern part of the state, Navy officials said. Base personnel will be evacuated on Friday, the officials said.
President Bush mentioned Washington's role in preparing for Wilma during a White House news conference Thursday.
"We got a job to make sure this hurricane headed toward Florida -- the federal response -- is prepared for it," he said.
As of 8 p.m. ET, Wilma's center was about 120 miles (195 kilometers) southeast of Cozumel, Mexico, and was moving northwest at near 5 mph (8 kph), the hurricane center said.
Hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph (118 kph) extended outward from the center up to 85 miles (140 kilometers), and tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph (62 kph) up to 200 miles (325 kilometers).
A hurricane warning was in effect from San Felipe to Chetumal on the Yucatan, including Cozumel and the nearby islands. A hurricane warning was also in effect for Swan Island.
Early Wednesday, the storm registered the lowest-recorded barometric pressure of any Atlantic basin hurricane in history -- an indication of its intensity, according to the hurricane center.
'Time for us to go'
In the Yucatan tourist playground of Cancun, lines of buses evacuated thousands of visitors from hotels while employees boarded up windows, The Associated Press reported. Tourists packed the city's airport trying to escape the storm's target zone.
"You hear it was the biggest storm on record, and yeah, that was the clincher right there," said Mark Carara of Colorado, who told the AP he cut his family's vacation two days short. "It was time for us to go."
South of Cancun in Playa de Carmen, Mike Goepfrich, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, told the AP he was staying put. "As long as they give me beer in the shelter, and my kids are safe, we'll be fine," Goepfrich said. "We're going to ride it out here."
But a fisherman nearby, Rolando Ramirez, 51, had a starker view of the storm, the AP reported. "People here aren't concerned about anything," Ramirez told the AP. "They don't know that when the hurricane comes, this will all be under water."
