Beta was upgraded to a hurricane by the United States National Hurricane Centre early on Saturday as it continued to whip the Colombian island of Providencia with high winds and rain.
”Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 75 mph [120 kph] with higher gusts. This makes Beta a category-one hurricane,” said the Miami-based hurricane centre in a statement.
The hurricane is expected to move north-northwest and slam into Central America by Sunday as a category-two storm. Thousands of people in Nicaragua are being evacuated and army soldiers have been brought in to help.
The designation makes Beta the 13th hurricane of the season, a record for the Atlantic hurricane season, which has seen 23 named storms, more than at any point since record keeping began in 1851.
The previous record of 21 was set in 1933.
Florida slowly recovering
Meanwhile, Florida recovered a promising degree of normalcy on Friday, four days after Hurricane Wilma pounded the peninsula, as power began to come back on and airports and ports were reopened.
At least 18 people in Florida had died either directly or indirectly from the massive storm, which tore through the southern American state on Monday, causing billions of dollars in damage.
Three million people were still without electricity in southern Florida. Most of them were in the heavily populated counties of the south-eastern part of the state: Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade.
Some residents have been warned that they could be without power until late November.
”We are going back to normal,” said Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Alvarez, noting that the region’s ports and airports were open and that provisions were flowing into the area.
Fourteen people were confirmed dead by the state emergency office late on Thursday, and four people were discovered dead on Thursday from carbon monoxide poisoning due to the use of a power generator and gas barbecue grill inside a home, police said.
Wilma was blamed for the deaths of 10 people in Mexico and four in Cuba. — Sapa-AP, AFP