Tropical Storm Katia strengthening in distant Atlantic, could become major hurricane later this week

TAMPA - Tropical Storm Katia is growing stroner as the system quickly makes its way west over the distant Atlantic Ocean.

At 11 a.m., the National Hurricane Center reported that Katia had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph.

Click here to visit the abcactionnews.com Hurricane Center

The system is expected to further develop and near hurricane status by late Wednesday or early Thursday.

The forecast track shows Katia becoming a Category 2 or 3 storm over the weekend.

Katia, located about 630 miles west-southwest of the southern Cape Verde Islands, is moving west-northwest at 18 mph.

Forecasters say the system could affect the Caribbean, but add that it's too early to tell.

Katia replaces Katrina in the rotating roster of storm names because of the catastrophic damage along the U.S. Gulf coast from the 2005 storm.

The National Hurricane Center will issue its next advisory on Katia at 5 p.m.

Hurricane Irene may now be a memory, but people on the East Coast are still facing the damage -- and will be for months to come.

The storm, which killed at least 40 people across 11 states, is still being felt all over the region. Nearly 5 million homes and businesses in a dozen states were still without electricity, and utilities warned it might be a week or more before some people get their power back.

While people without electric power waited for the lights to come back on and communities from New York to Maine took stock of the storm, homeowners and towns in land-locked Vermont faced a sobering new reality: Washed-out roads and bridges left them, for now, inaccessible by automobile.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.