MIAMI, Sept 21: Powerful Hurricane Rita was upgraded to a category-five storm early Wednesday as it roared into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico, packing winds of 217 kilometers per hour, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

“Rita is now a category-four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson (intensity) scale,” the hurricane center said in a statement.

Just before 1200 GMT (0500pm PST), the hurricane was located 314 kilometers west of Key West, Florida, and 1,270 kilometers east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, and it was churning westward at around 22 kilometers per hour.

Meteorologists predicted earlier that Rita will make landfall in Texas over the weekend, but a “cone of probability” in the forecast indicates that the storm might slam ashore anywhere between northeastern Mexico and the swamplands of southern Louisiana, west of New Orleans.

Not willing to take any chances, authorities in Galveston, Texas, located on a Gulf Coast barrier island 65 kilometers southeast of Houston, were set to issue a mandatory evacuation order for all residents on Wednesday afternoon.—AFP