Storm Isaac weakens, but remains a threat

MIAMI (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Isaac weakened slightly as it dumped heavy rain off Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on Thursday but it was expected to strengthen into a hurricane before tearing across the Dominican Republic and Haiti, U.S. forecasters said.

Isaac also continued to pose a big threat to Florida, where it is on track to make landfall on Monday as the Republican National Convention is due get underway in Tampa.

Authorities have not ruled out the possibility of postponing or relocating the RNC convention, if the storm takes direct aim at the city on Florida's central Gulf Coast. But Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the convention was not one of his biggest concerns, at least for now.

"People are spending a lot of time talking about that," Fugate said of the convention.

"I wish they'd be talking about making sure people in the (Florida) Keys are getting ready and that people in southwest Florida are getting ready," he told CNN.

The storm also has a potential to affect U.S. energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

Isaac was centered about 225 miles south-southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Thursday morning and moving westward at 13 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The storm's top sustained winds had dropped to 40 miles per hour but the Miami-based hurricane center said re-strengthening was forecast over the next 48 hours.

"Isaac could become a hurricane on Friday before it reaches Hispaniola," the center said.

Hispaniola is the island shared by both the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the latter of which is highly prone to flooding due to deforestation and mountainous terrain.

The hurricane center said Isaac was expected to dump between eight and 12 inches of rain over some parts of Hispaniola, with total accumulations up to 20 inches in some areas.

"These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides," it warned in an advisory.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, also still has hundreds of thousands of people living in tents or makeshift shelters more than 2-1/2 years after a devastating earthquake that took more than a quarter of a million lives.

PANHANDLE LANDFALL

Most computer forecast models early on Thursday had shifted west from a day earlier and showed Isaac skirting across the north coast of Cuba before cutting across the Keys island chain and southern tip of Florida on Monday.

It was then likely to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle, in the northwest corner of the state, although one model puts it almost directly over Tampa en route to the Panhandle.

At the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeast Cuba, Isaac forced the postponement of pretrial hearings that were to begin on Thursday for five prisoners accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Florida has not been hit by a major hurricane since 2005 and forecasts showed Isaac was not expected to strengthen beyond a weak Category 1, with top sustained wind speeds of about 80 mph.

Analysts at Weather Insight, a Thomson Reuters company, said Isaac has a 50 percent probability of moving into the heart of the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production region.

The threat to Florida triggered a nearly 6 percent jump in orange juice prices on Wednesday as they surged to a six-week high in trading in New York.

Florida produces more than 75 percent of the U.S. orange crop and accounts for about 40 percent of the world's orange juice supply, making it key to volatility in orange juice futures trading.

(Editing by Anthony Boadle)

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/storm-isaac-threatens-caribbean-republican-convention-000751324.html

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