Tonight, Category 5 Hurricane Iota is only hours away from making a catastrophic and violent landfall over northeastern Nicaragua. And it's on the same track as Eta, the hurricane that just one week ago smashed that part of the country's Atlantic Coast.
As of 3:37 PM, it was about 55 miles east, southeast of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. That puts it at just 450 miles southeast of Belize City.
And while our prayers are with our Nicaraguan neighbours tonight, should Belizeans be concerned, and will this storm bring a whole new round of flooding like we saw after Eta? Those are the questions on many Belizeans minds tonight and we got the answer's straight from the acting Chief meteorologist:
Central America is far from recovered from the damage that Hurricane ETA left in its wake. But just days after that storm dissipated there was already another one on the horizon. And Hurricane Iota is terrifying not just in its strength, it will make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, but this hurricane is also terrifyingly following the exact path that ETA did.
Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir how similar is the path of this hurricane to the path of Hurricane Eta? And how will that affect a lot some of these Nicaraguans who live on the Atlantic coast?"
Ronald Gordon - Acting Chief Meteorologist
"Well for Nicaragua, unfortunately, the past is very similar the system and main location I believe just made landfall Sorry, just sort of where it made landfall. And his catastrophic because as you would imagine, residents in those areas attempt to recover from a major hurricane, and you're facing a major hurricane even stronger than the last one in just two weeks, less than less than two weeks. So that's a tremendous catastrophe for that area at the moment."
It's a scenario the likes of which would decimate the country of Belize. And while we're not the ones getting the double whammy this time around we wanted to find out how the outer bands of the storm will affect Belize.
Ronald Gordon - Acting Chief Meteorologist
"This system will impact Belize and the major impact will be rainfall. We are expecting at least 10 inches of rainfall over the country that total rainfall for the week from hurricane Iota as it tracks across Central America. These rainfalls coupled with the rains that we already got from Hurricane ETA will compound the flooding situation over various parts of the country. Our soils are already saturated. And with additional rainfall, we can expect more flooding."
"In terms of us here in Belize. Fortunately, the system is moving a bit farther south compared to each other. And also another factor is that it's not expected to emerge over the Gulf of Honduras as Eta did. So in that case, the rainfall would be less than what occurred with ETA. And finally another factor which will affect rainfall is that the system is moving faster than that of it than it was moving. a faster moving system means that the rains, heavy rains at least will not last as long."
And Gordon says that in contrast to ETA which moved northeast by pulling away from Central America, this system will have a lingering flow behind it which will keep the rains, albeit lighter rains over Belize well into the weekend.
Cherisse Halsall:
"Now, sir, when you said that the rainfall would compound the flooding we already had, what exactly does that mean? are we going to see some of those generational type floods that we saw. For example, in places like Calla Creek, and on the new roaring Creek Bridge?"
Ronald Gordon
"Well, the approach to the bridge would be first of all very honest that your crystal clarity to somebody in hydrology however, I would imagine that we could have, if not similar flooding, referring to what we had with the previous system, from this one with the amount of rainfall and given the fact that we already have some moisture on the soil on the ground already, which will compound the situation as I mentioned."
And as a likely consequence of Global warming, these hurricanes just keep coming to the system that could follow IOTA would be the 31st in an already record breaking year.
Ronald Gordon - Acting Chief Meteorologist
"We are monitoring the system that is forecast to develop over the southeast Caribbean Sea. Fortunately, and it's a bit too early to tell, but it's looking like that one is going to go a bit more south than Iota. So the current weather prediction for that system is to probably affect Nicaragua, maybe not Costa Rica. And that would be some relief for us, because the system being farther away will have less impact in terms of, especially in terms of winds."
At 6:00 p.m. Hurricane Iota was located about 35 miles East of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with maximum sustained winds of a flat out terrifying 160 Miles per hour. Our prayers are with Nicaragua tonight.
According to Gordon Belize can expect upwards of 10 inches and possibly 20 inches in extreme scenarios. We can also expect winds of about 20 to 35 knots, which could be dangerous especially for operators of small crafts.
