Tropical Storm Emily Gains Strength, Continues Westward Towards Puerto Rico

A strengthening Tropical Storm Emily is continues to move westward through the Caribbean inching closer to the islands of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti where watches and warnings are in effect.

The National Hurricane Center said as of 2 p.m. Emily about 215 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, moving at 12 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour.

That's about 1,200 miles southeast of Miami, according to the Sun Sentinel.

The tropical storm could draw close to South Florida on Saturday morning as a storm but not a hurricane, the paper reported.

The Sun Sentinel said forecasters have said the system could produce stormy conditions at the shoreline. South Florida might start seeing rains and gusty winds on Friday night, the National Weather Service told the paper.

Reuters reported that record breaking heat continues to broil central and southern states as Emily threatens to soak the southeast.

The National Weather Service had issued excessive heat warnings for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa and Arizona.

The National Weather Service predicted that in Kansas City, Missouri, there would be a high of 109 on Tuesday, beating its all-time high of 104. Heat is suspected in the deaths of 21 people in that area, according to the city's health department.

Bloomberg has reported that coffee jumped the most in a week because of speculation that Tropical Storm Emily may hamper production of arabica beans in Central America.

"Any kind of flooding rains in Central America may put some pressure on those prices," Jimmy Tintle, an analyst at Transworld Futures in Tampa, Florida, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg.