MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tropical Storm Ernesto gains strength.

Ernesto's top winds reach 75 mph, making it the 2006 season's first hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center,while Debby has been downgraded to a tropical storm depression in the mid-Atlantic.

Ernesto's maximum sustained winds increased Saturday to 95 kilometers per hour, according to the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC).

At 11:00 a.m. in Miami (1500 GMT), the eye of the storm was located some 405 kilometers (252 miles) south-southwest of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and 680 kilometers (423 miles) east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, at a latitude of about 15.1 degrees north and a longitude of 71.2 degrees west. Ernesto, the fifth storm of the cyclone season in the North Atlantic is moving west-northwest at some 22 kilometers (14 miles) per hour and if it continues on that path, the center of the system will pass Saturday south of the island of Hispaniola - shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic - and close to Jamaica on Sunday.

The meteorological phenomenon "could reach hurricane force as it passes near Jamaica," where The NHC says a hurricane watch has been announced with a warning that the storm may cause strong downpours and powerful waves.

Tropical storms become hurricanes when they reach maximum sustained winds of 119 kilometers (74 miles) per hour.

The Haitian government has also sent out a tropical storm warning for the area west of its border with the Dominican Republic to southwestern Haiti.

According to NHC computer models, the storm could lash western Cuba and then hit U.S. states in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the week, around the first anniversary of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

During this year's hurricane season only five tropical storms have materialized including Ernesto, despite the fact that greater than average storm activity is expected.

Last year was a record season with 27 tropical storms and 15 hurricanes, of which seven reached categories 3,4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, on which maximum strength is a category 5.