Hurricane Felix will go down in history as the fastest hurricane ever to reach category 5 strength and the fastest hurricane ever to deteriorate from a category five to a tropical storm. Indeed Felix made history and over the weekend most forecasters agreed the bull's eye was on Belize. That's why a pack of international media descended on Belize yesterday. We tracked down the storm chasers today.
Keith Swift,
What brought you to Belize?
Jim Cantore, Weather Channel
"That would be Felix. You know we got the call Monday morning that we were going to go to Chetumal first but obviously the track shifted to the south. We came to Belize City instead and by the time we got here, it had shifted so far to the south and it was too late to get to Nicaragua."
Jeff Kofman, ABC News
"Initially the forecast track had it coming further north as you know and we initially were going to go to Chetumal but then we realized that it was coming south and so I actually made the decision that we should come here and yesterday as we realized it was moving further south we actually did try to get into Honduras but by then the flights were cancelled and it was too late."
Phil Keating, Fox News Channel
"We came down to Belize because on Sunday and Monday the forecast
track for Hurricane Felix was the entire coastline for Belize and Belize City was close to the airport and so we thought it would be a good place to get in place but however every hurricane is a roll of the dice when you come in ahead of time and where it exactly hits, you never know and in this particular case, it really spared much of Belize."
Jim Cantore will remain in Belize until Friday and continues to file regular reports for the Weather Channel. ABC's Jeff Kofman has filed reports for Good Morning America and filed one this evening for the ABC Nightly News. Phil Keating from Fox News Channel is planning to head south.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited and Prepared for the internet by Keith Swift
