A new tropical storm in the Caribbean is threatening to bring life-threatening rainfall to Central America before heading towards Mexico and the United States as a tropical storm warning was issued.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) on Thursday predicted “potentially catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides” in Honduras in the coming days.
Tropical Storm Sara was about 85 km (50 miles) off the eastern coast of Nicaragua and Honduras on Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 65 km/h (40 mph), just below tropical storm strength.
Sara is moving westward toward Honduras and is the nineteenth storm of the season.
The center of the storm is expected to cross Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula over the weekend as it turns sharply eastward, slowing over land and dumping heavy rain on flood-prone mountains and valleys in northern Honduras, as well as generating a surge of storm on low temperatures. -Atlantic coast of Central America, known as Mosquitia.
After that, weather experts said, there is still uncertainty about Sara’s path, including a possible hurricane threat over Florida next week. Florida is still recovering from two major hurricanes that hit its West Coast this year, Helene in September and Milton in October.
“While an impact in Florida is a possible scenario, any potential landfall remains around 7 days away, and there is still a lot of uncertainty about what actually moves in the Gulf [of Mexico] next week,” wrote Ryan Truchelut, a hurricane expert in Tallahassee, Florida.
The latest weather models show Sara spending more time over Central America, likely weakening the storm and reducing the threat of hurricanes in the United States.
A strong storm this late in the hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30, would be highly unusual. “Of the 642 tropical storms or hurricanes recorded in the continental United States since 1850, only 4 occurred after November 15, and only one, 1985 Kate, was a hurricane,” Truchelut wrote on his WeatherTiger blog.
Truchelut and other meteorologists attributed the rare conditions to warmer seas and higher weather temperatures for this time of year. The Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean seas are not cooling as they normally do this time of year.
“There is plenty of fuel available to sustain a hurricane, if weather conditions allow,” Truchelut added.
Earth saw another unusually warm month with October ranked as the second warmest October on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In May, NOAA predicted that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. Forecasts called for up to 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.
An average hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
Last month, Rafael was the 11th hurricane to form this year, hitting western Cuba, with five Category 3 storms packing maximum sustained winds of 178 km/h (111 mph) or more.
