MIAMI (AFP) — Hurricane Ike turned into an "extremely dangerous" category four storm in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday with winds of 215 kilometers (135 miles) per hour, the US National Hurricane Center reported.
"Ike becomes an extremely dangerous category four hurricane" on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, the center said in its latest advisory.
The powerful storm, the fifth hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season, was moving over the Atlantic far from any land and it was too early to predict whether "any land areas might eventually be affected," it said.
As of 0300 GMT, the center of Ike was located about 980 kilometers or 610 miles northeast of the Leeward Islands, moving west-northwest at 28 kilometers (17 miles) per hour, the center said.
The storm was expected to move west over the west-central Atlantic over the next two days.
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