The Caribbean island ran an advertisement in the New York Times on Sunday, urging travellers to visit an island that had not been hit by a hurricane since 1955.

Last night, Tropical Storm Marilyn was closing on Barbados, and forecasters were worried the 55-mph storm could build into a hurricane by the time it reached the island chain.

"Our latest forecast has it becoming a hurricane after the islands, but the pressure is dropping fairly fast, so that's something we've got to think about,'' said National Hurricane Centre forecaster Mr. Jerry Jarrell.

Fed by easterly trade winds, Marilyn formed in the Atlantic as the 13th named storm of the season on Tuesday and generated storm warnings for islands well south of the path taken by destructive Hurricane Luis last week.

Local forecasters said she was no threat to Bermuda. Warnings covered the southern Caribbean islands of Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St.

Lucia, Grenada and Tobago, while a storm watch was in effect for Trinidad.

Rainfall of five to eight inches was possible.

Yesterday afternoon, Marilyn's centre was about 200 miles east of Barbados.

The storm was moving west at about 16 mph, but a northward push was expected.

"Our forecast has it going through the islands and going into the Caribbean'' early on Thursday (today), Mr. Jarrell said.

On that track, Marilyn would be the first hurricane since 1988 to take a route through the Caribbean Sea, rather than along the island fringe like Luis.

Forecasters also had been watching a weak depression about 490 miles southeast of Bermuda, but it degenerated yesterday into a swirl of low clouds, and weather advisories were discontinued. Luis, the most powerful hurricane so far this season, claimed 12 lives in St. Maarten, Antigua, Puerto Rico, Dominica and Guadeloupe before shooting northwest of Bermuda and deep into the Atlantic to Newfoundland. Storms are named when steady winds reach 39 mph and become hurricanes if they build to 74 mph. The hurricane season runs from June through November.