Iota is expected to hit the Colombian island of Providencia on Sunday night.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras:
Less than two weeks after powerful Storm Eta killed more than 200 people across Central America, authorities warned that Hurricane Iota was to invade coastal areas of Nicaragua and Honduras on Monday.
At 03:00 GMT on Sunday, Iota – the last of an unusually busy storm season – was about 705 kilometers east-southeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, moving slowly westward with maximum sustained winds. of 75 miles per hour (120 km / h).
Iota was transformed into a hurricane early Sunday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
“The reconnaissance plane finds that Iota has grown stronger to become the thirteenth hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season,” he tweeted.
Iota is expected to hit the Colombian island of Providencia by the end of Sunday and is expected to quickly become a major hurricane as it approaches Central America.
“Heavy rains in Iota, through Thursday, are likely to lead to flash floods and potentially fatal river flooding in parts of northern Colombia and Central America,” the NHC warned. .
“The floods and landslides in Honduras and Nicaragua could be exacerbated by the recent effects of Hurricane Eta in these areas, causing significant impacts.”
Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua announced evacuations on Friday, even as the region was still reeling from the devastation inflicted by Eta.
Heavy rains from Eta erupted the river banks and triggered landslides as far north as Chiapas, Mexico.
The NHC warned that Iota will deposit up to 16 inches (40 centimeters) of rain over Honduras, northern Nicaragua, eastern Guatemala and southern Belize, with isolated totals of up to 30 inches.
“In danger of death”
This could lead to “flash floods and significant and potentially fatal flooding, as well as landslides,” the NHC said.
Honduran authorities on Friday ordered the police and military to evacuate the area of San Pedro Sula – the country’s second city and industrial capital, located 110 miles north of Tegucigalpa.
Eta has hit this region hard: around 40,000 people are still in shelters across the country.
The government has also ordered that water be released from Honduras’ main hydroelectric dam, due to the risk that it will overflow from rains in Iota.
In Nicaragua, authorities were bracing for “floods, rains, high tides, wind and landslides on saturated soil,” said Guillermo Gonzalez, head of the national disaster response agency Sinapred.
Early estimates show that “some 80,000 families will be at risk,” he said, with evacuations underway in communities along the border with Honduras.
Authorities sent boats on Friday to evacuate the community of Cabo Gracias a Dios, where the Coco River flows into the Caribbean along the “Mosquito Coast”.
The Guatemalan disaster management agency CONRED has called on residents of the north and northeast to evacuate voluntarily.
Eta struck the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, one of the strongest November storms on record.
Warmer seas caused by climate change make hurricanes stronger longer after they arrive on land, scientists say.
This year’s hurricane season saw a record 30 named tropical storms across the Caribbean, Central America, and the Southeastern United States.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
