Tropical Storm Hermine strengthens into hurricane: US forecasters

Florida: Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened into a hurricane Thursday as it continued churning on a path toward Florida, US forecasters said.

At 1:55 pm local time (1855 GMT), data from an Air Force hurricane hunter plane indicated that maximum sustained winds in Hermine were about 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour), the National Hurricane Center said.

That would make it a Category One hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The storm was located about 175 miles west of Tampa, Florida and moving north-northeast at 14 miles per hour.