First hurricane of 2007 season forms in Atlantic

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) Tropical Storm Dean strengthened into the 2007 Atlantic storm season's first hurricane today as it revved up over warm waters and raced toward Caribbean islands, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The hurricane, with top sustained winds of (120 km per hour) by 5:00 a.m EDT/ 1430 hrs IST, was expected to strengthen further over coming days.

Dean should continue to move quickly west to northwest, the hurricane center said, adding: ''The models are very tightly clustered around a track through the Caribbean Sea to near the Yucatan Peninsula in five days.'' Some models indicate Dean could become a major hurricane over the western Caribbean, it said.

Hurricane warnings were posted for the islands of Dominica and St Lucia by the local governments and hurricane watches continued for the islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and its dependencies Saba and St Eustatius, the center said.

Barbados was put under a tropical storm warning, it said.

At 5:00 a.m. EDT/1430 hrs IST, the center of Dean was about (780 km) east of Barbados.

Another weather system, Tropical Storm Erin, neared the Texas coast, spooking oil markets but not presenting a serious threat to life.

The hurricane center lifted a tropical storm warning along the southern Texas coast from Port Mansfield southward to Brownsville.

But the warning remained in effect for the Texas coast from San Luis Pass southward to Port Mansfield.

MORE RAIN FOR TEXAS A tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions are expected within the warning area in the next 24 hours.

Erin was about 55 miles (90 km) southeast of Corpus Christi and about 180 miles southwest of Galveston.

The storm's sustained winds were near 40 mph (65 kph), with higher gusts, the hurricane center said.

Between 3-6 inches (8-16 cm) of rain was expected across much of central and southern Texas, which has been rain-soaked this summer, with possible isolated amounts of 10 inches, the center said.

With a large amount of US oil and gas production centered in the Texas Gulf Coast, energy markets have been on edge since the Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, when a series of powerful hurricanes, including Ivan, Katrina and Rita, ravaged the region.

Roughly one-third of US domestic oil and gas production comes from the Gulf of Mexico.

Forecasters have predicted the 6-month hurricane season, which officially begins on June 1 but rarely gets into gear before August, would be more active than average with up to 16 named storms. An average year historically has 10-11 storms, of which six strengthen into hurricanes.

None of the storms that formed previously this year posed a serious threat.

Atlantic hurricanes, the same phenomenon as typhoons in the Pacific, shot into the public consciousness after the devastation of 2004 when four storms in a row crossed Florida and in 2005 when Katrina swamped New Orleans.

Hurricane Rita also that year slammed into the Texas coast near New Orleans and Wilma became for a while the most powerful hurricane ever recorded.

REUTERS SV KN1728