Isaac aims for Hispaniola, projections downgraded

Tropical Storm Isaac strengthened slightly as it spun toward the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but seemed unlikely to gain enough steam moncler sale cheapearly Friday to strike the island of Hispaniola as a hurricane.

The storm's failure to gain the kind of strength in the Caribbean that forecasters initially projected made it more likely that Isaac won't become a hurricane until it enters the Gulf of Mexico, said Eric Blake, a forecaster with U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"We think it could become a hurricane on Monday," Blake said late Thursday. "It would be somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico."

The latest five-day forecast showed the storm's path moncler saleshifting to the west, possibly making landfall near the Alabama-Mississippi border, Blake said. But he said it was "too early to know" the exact course and stressed that Florida's Gulf Coast, including Tampa, the site of next week's Republican National Convention, was still in the forecast cone.

The storm dumped heavy rain Thursday across eastern and southern Puerto Rico and whipped up waves as high as 10 feet (3 meters) in the Caribbean as it churned across the region.

Late Thursdsay moncler outletnight, Isaac was centered about 145 miles (235 kilometers) south-southeast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph). It was moving west-northwest at 18 mph (30 kph), according to the hurricane center.

In flood-prone Haiti, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe urged people to avoid crossing rivers, to tape their windows, and to stay calm, saying "panic creates more problems."

Lamothe and other Haitian officials said the government had set aside about $50, 000 in emergency funds and had buses and 32 boats on standby for moncler jackets evacuations.

But among many Haitians, the notion of disaster preparedness in a country where most people get by on about $2 a day was met with a shrug.

"We don't have houses that can bear a hurricane," said Jeanette Lauredan, who lives in a tent camp in the crowded Delmas  moncler coatsdistrict of Port-au-Prince.

About 400,000 people remain in settlement camps comprised of shacks and tarps in the wake of Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake.