Hurricane Wilma left a wide, messy swath of damage Monday as it sped across Florida with winds of more than 100 mph, shattering skyscraper windows, peeling off roofs and knocking out power to at least 3.2 million customers from Key West to Daytona Beach.

One death was blamed on Wilma, and even storm-savvy Floridians found the hurricane fearsome as it sliced through the middle of heavily populated South Florida.

The Category 3 hurricane littered the landscape with damaged signs, awnings, fences, billboards, roof tiles, pool screens, street lights and electrical lines. Felled trees dotted even expressways.

More than one-third of Key West flooded, cutting off the island, and there was scattered floodwater elsewhere. In Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Miami Beach, high-rises had countless windows blown out, including at the Broward County Courthouse and the 14-story school board office building.

Thousands of residents had been ordered to evacuate Sunday and businesses and emergency officials prepared rescue and relief plans as forecasters predicted Hurricane Wilma would pick up speed "like a rocket" on a course toward Florida.

The southern half of Florida's peninsula was under a hurricane warning Sunday in anticipation of Wilma, a Category 2 storm with 100 mph sustained wind. Although still far from the state, Wilma's outer bands of rain had already caused street flooding in a South Florida suburb.

Tropical storm-force wind was expected to begin lashing the state late Sunday and meteorologists said the heart of the storm was expected to roar across the state Monday.
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Hurricane center director Max Mayfield predicted Wilma would dramatically pick up speed later Sunday and its top wind speed would increase.

"It's really going to take off like a rocket," he said. "It's going to start moving like 20 mph."

About 160,000 people in the state were under mandatory evacuation orders, including the entire population of the Florida Keys island chain, according to officials and Census data. There was no way of knowing exactly how many actually left, but it appeared only about 20 percent of the 78,000 Keys residents fled, senior Monroe County emergency management director Billy Wagner said.

"If they don't get out of there, they're going to be in deep trouble," he said Sunday.

Evacuation orders also covered barrier islands and coastal areas in Collier and Lee counties, such as Fort Myers Beach, Marco Island, Sanibel and parts of Naples.

The fearsome core of Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel on Friday, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline, where thousands of stranded tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel ballrooms.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the hurricane's eyewall — part of the fastest-moving section surrounding the eye — had hit Cozumel, a popular stop for divers and cruise ships.

Hundreds of residents and nearly 1,000 tourists were riding out the hurricane in shelters in Cozumel.

The storm, packing sustained winds at nearly 145 mph, was expected to make an agonizingly slow journey to the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and sideswipe Cuba — 130 miles east of Cancun — then swing east toward hurricane-weary Florida.

Cuba evacuated nearly 370,000 people in the face of the storm, which has already killed at least 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.
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Forecasters said the Category 4 storm could dump as much as 40 inches of rain over isolated, mountainous parts of western Cuba and about half that in some other parts of Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula.

It could strengthen to a Category 5 hurricane before hitting land, forecasters said. Its slow progress delayed its expected arrival in Florida until Monday, but fueled fears that it would have more time to dump rain and pummel the low-lying Mayan Riviera, possibly causing major damage. The hurricane was expected to churn over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for most of the weekend.

Hurricane Wilma brought heavy rains to Central America and Mexico on Wednesday as it swirled into the most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded, a Category 5 monster packing 175 mph winds that forecasters warned was "extremely dangerous."

Wilma spent most of its force at sea on the western Caribbean on Wednesday. Computer models showed Wilma possibly making a sharp turn as it hits upper-level winds blowing east, moving through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico, where it threatened Cancun, before bearing down on Florida over the weekend.

"All interests in the Florida Keys and the Florida peninsula should closely monitor the progress of extremely dangerous Hurricane Wilma," the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
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But Wilma was not expected to keep its record strength for long, as disruptive atmospheric winds in the Gulf of Mexico should weaken it before landfall, Hurricane Center meteorologist Hugh Cobb. Gulf water is about 1 to 2 degrees cooler than that in the Caribbean, which should inhibit its strength more, he added.