Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Wilma became the 12th hurricane of the Atlantic Ocean season today, tying a 1969 record. National Hurricane Center forecasters expect the storm's winds to reach at least 111 mph later this week as it heads toward Florida.

Wilma strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph (161 kph) as of 8 p.m. Miami time, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. The storm is expected to strengthen and move northwest in the next day, the center said.

Wilma is forecast to become a ``major'' hurricane of at least Category 3 strength, and possibly Category 4, on the five- step Saffir-Simpson scale, said Stacy Stewart, a Hurricane Center meteorologist. The storm is predicted to pass through the northwest Caribbean, then head northeast and threaten Florida by the weekend, according to the hurricane center.

``We're asking all Floridians along the southwest Gulf Coast and the Keys to monitor this storm very closely,'' Mike Stone, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said today in an interview from Tallahassee.

Wilma is forecast to ``graze'' Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and western Cuba by about Oct. 21, then turn northeast toward the southern half of the Florida Peninsula and the Keys, Stewart said in an interview from Miami. The lower Keys and southwest Florida coast may begin to have rain, squalls, some tropical- storm-force winds and tornadoes, he said.

This year's June 1-Nov. 30 season already equaled the busiest on record, matching the 21 named systems of 1933, when Wilma became a tropical storm yesterday.

Energy Prices Fall

Crude oil and natural gas fell as gasoline plunged to the lowest in almost three months on forecasts showing that Wilma will miss storm-battered production platforms off the Louisiana and Texas coasts. Prices surged to records as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shut all U.S. oil output in the Gulf of Mexico. The region accounts for about 30 percent of U.S. oil production.

About two-thirds of normal output remained crippled by the earlier storms as of today, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said.

``The supply, production and distribution of oil and gas will be nearly unaffected if it makes landfall on the Florida Gulf coast,'' said Mark Routt, an oil analyst with Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

Wilma was about 185 miles (298 kilometers) south of Grand Cayman as of 8 p.m., moving west-northwest at about 8 mph.

Honduras Storm Warning

Cuba issued a hurricane watch for the provinces of Matanzas west through Pinar Del Rio. Mexico issued a hurricane watch for parts of the Yucatan Peninsula. A hurricane watch means winds of 74 mph or higher are possible in the next 36 hours.

A tropical storm warning, with winds of 39 mph to 73 mph possible within 24 hours, is in effect for Honduras from the Nicaragua border west to Cabo Camaron. The Cayman Islands remain under a tropical storm warning and hurricane watch.

Rain has been falling in Jamaica since Oct. 15 and is beginning to spread west into the Caymans and north into Cuba, Stewart said. Central and eastern Cuba will have heavy downpours for the next three or four days, he said. The storm's hurricane winds extend as far as 15 miles from the center ,and tropical- storm force winds stretch 140 miles from the eye.

Rainfall of 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) was forecast over the Cayman Islands, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba, with isolated amounts of as much as 15 inches. Parts of Honduras and Nicaragua were forecast to receive as much as 12 inches of rain.

Cuba Evacuations

In Cuba, about 5,300 people were evacuated in three southeastern provinces because of rains from Wilma, the official Cuban News Agency said today on its Web site. The east of the country -- on the other side from the hurricane -- will continue to experience intense rains associated with Wilma for the next 48 to 72 hours, it said.

Crude oil for November delivery fell $1.16, or 1.8 percent, to close at $63.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange today. Futures have declined 11 percent since reaching a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina made landfall. Prices are up 18 percent from a year ago.

There are six weeks left in this year's record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season. Katrina, the costliest U.S. natural disaster, slammed into Louisiana in August, killing about 1,250 people. Spain was hit this month by its first tropical cyclone ever.

This season has been the busiest since formal aircraft reconnaissance of weather systems began in 1944. Until this year, that mark stood at 19, in 1995, though less-reliable data indicate 1933 had 21 storms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

All the letters of the alphabet except Q, U, X, Y and Z are used to name storms in alphabetical order. After Wilma, the storms will be named for letters in the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on.

``It's been a long season,'' Stone said. ``We're ready to go.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Burke in New York at hburke2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 18, 2005 21:03 EDT