DEVELOPING (ETH) – Hurricane Delta has rapidly intensified into a Category 2 in the Caribbean Sea and is barreling toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and expected to strike by Wednesday. Delta also continues to pose a hurricane danger to the U.S. Gulf Coast later this week, with reported threats of storm-surge flooding, damaging winds, and heavy rainfall according to the latest from the Weather Channel.

The report states that local residents in the extreme upper Texas coast and Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle should be persistently checking for important forecast updates and have hurricane contingency plans on standby. Delta has maximum sustained winds now of 110 mph, and the storm continues to move to the west-northwest at 15 mph.

The Winds in Delta have also increased by 70 mph in the past 24 hours ending 8 a.m. EDT on Tuesday which doubles the criteria for the rapid intensification of a tropical cyclone, which is a wind speed increase of at least 35 mph in 24 hours or less. According to Sam Lillo, an NOAA scientist based in Boulder, Colorado.

“Delta’s intensification was due to an environment of the highest ocean heat content anywhere in the tropical Atlantic basin, low wind shear and sufficiently moist air, in a region notorious for rapid intensification in October”