Wilma, the record-equalling 21st storm of the Atlantic season, was upgraded to a category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale and authorities in Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua and the Cayman Islands have all issued alerts.

The US National Hurricane Center has warned that Wilma could hit the Florida coast this weekend.

It has predicted Wilma will become "a major hurricane" by Thursday.

By late Tuesday, the burgeoning hurricane was already packing winds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) an hour, the Miami-based monitoring centre said. Wilma was 290km (180 miles) south of Grand Cayman and moving west toward Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

From there it is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico from where it was predicted to move northwest toward Florida.

World oil prices dropped amid hopes that Wilma would not hit oil installations on the storm-weary US Gulf Coast.

Cuba has ordered 5,000 people evacuated from flood-prone areas on the storm's course. Mexico has also put the tourist zones on Yucatan on alert. Honduras has also ordered preparations for evacuations as heavy rain started falling. Widespread flooding was reported in Jamaica from rainfall sparked by the hurricane.

Organisers of the MTV Latin Awards brought their annual ceremony at the Mexican resort of Cancun forward one day to Wednesday because of the storm.

Wilma is the 12th full-blown hurricane of the Atlantic season and a series of them have left thousands dead in Central America and on the US Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,200 in the United States on August 29 and Hurricane Stan last week left more than 2,000 dead in Guatemala alone.

"Wilma is a category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 24 hours and Wilma is expected to become a major hurricane during the next day or two," the National Hurricane Center said.

Florida has already been battered by hurricanes Dennis and Katrina this year and the state's governor, Jeb Bush, brother of President George W. Bush, was downcast at the thought of a new hit.

"Why us?" he said. "How does a storm take a sharp 90 degree turn?"

A climate study released Monday said the continental United States will face more extreme temperatures during the next century and worse rainfall along its hurricane-battered Gulf Coast.

The study, published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warned that greenhouse gases will likely swell to twice their current levels by the end of the century.

It predicted that the southwestern United States could endure as much as a 500 percent increase in hot events, leaving less water for the growing population; that the Gulf Coast region would receive more rainfall in shorter time spans; and that summers in the northeast would be shorter and hotter.

Meanwhile, several thousand people were evacuated from the Massachusetts town of Taunton as a dam threatened to burst.

Officials said heavy rainfall over the past week had placed enormous pressure on the 100-year-old wooden Whittendon Pond Dam, which controls water flow along the Mill River that passes through Taunton.

If the dam were to fail, officials said a second dam farther upstream would also likely collapse, emptying two lakes at the same time.

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