After rendering, on Wednesday, many cruise ships to change their previously scheduled course, which included visits to various Caribbean islands, Hurricane Omar has been reported by United States forecasters to have become a category 3 hurricane, since its maximum sustained winds had gone up from 115 mph to 125 mph overnight.

Nevertheless, authorities have informed that Omar had not caused major damage to the Caribbean islands, because it had missed all the important land masses, being said to have only sunk some boats at the Christiansted harbor in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, along with having knocked down trees and power lines alike as it had passed through St. Maarten. While in the latter’s Maho Bay area, the hurricane also defaced a string of popular with visitors wooden nightclubs.

Fortunately, the sole land mass it did hit was a tiny uninhabited island called Sombrero, senior hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart at the U.S. National Hurricane Center stated.

The only major land area the hurricane manged to hit was the eastern end of St. Croix, but forecasters said that at the time it touched the land, its maximum sustained winds were within tropical storm velocity limits.

Moreover, the 500,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery Hovensa on the island had already shut down most of their equipment, thus being one step ahead of Hurricane Omar.

The fifteenth tropical storm and seventh hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Omar became a category 1 hurricane on October 14, after a tropical disturbance in the Caribbean Sea first developed into Tropical Storm Omar that same day.