Americans brace for tropical storm Nate as it takes aim at southern US

Oil and gas producers pulled staff from offshore platforms while Alabama, Florida and Mississippi declared states of emergency as Tropical Storm Nate twisted its way toward the US Gulf coast on Friday after killing at least 22 people in Central America.

Nate is predicted to become a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest level on a five-category scale used by meteorologists, by the time it hits the US central Gulf coast on Saturday night or Sunday.

The storm had been heading toward Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, but its path changed on Friday morning, according to the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami, indicating that it would only skim past popular tourist destinations.

Nate was blowing maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (80kph) and was about 125 miles (200km) southeast of the Mexican holiday resort island of Cozumel on Friday afternoon, according to the NHC.

The storm is expected to brush by the edge of the Yucatan peninsula, home to beach resorts such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen, before heading into the Gulf of Mexico, the NHC said.

In the United States, a state of emergency was declared for 29 Florida counties and the states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the city of New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.