Friday, October 21st, 2005 — Rain and rough surf battered Cancun’s white-sand beaches as Hurricane Wilma inched toward a rendezvous with Mexico’s famous resort area. Thousands of stranded tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel ballrooms amid warnings the storm could cause catastrophic damage. The Category 4 hurricane — once the most intense on record in the Americas — was already hitting the island of Cozumel, a popular stop for divers and cruise ship passengers, where hundreds of residents and 970 tourists were riding out the hurricane.