And Beryl formed after a weekend of heavy rain in the north.
This makes the possibility of a landfall on the southern Yucatan - maybe just north of Chetumal - still consequential because Northern Belize is already saturated.
Here's the principal hydrologist:
Tenielle Henry, Principal Hydrologist
"The forecast for the north is still for flooding conditions to prevail. That is caused mainly by the excessive rainfall that we've received over the past couple weeks. We're not seeing any riverine flooding, which is different from precipitation -related flooding."
"But there is the possibility that we do get riverine flooding from our neighbors, Guatemala and Mexico, having floods, as we've seen with Chetumal. The same time Chetumal was flooding, Belize in the north was also flooding."
"But more recently, the flooding that we're seeing in San Román, San Pedro up in the north, Progreso, it's based on excessive rainfall. And so that is termed urban flooding. With any additional rainfall that we can get, I would say with a minimum of six inches more, we can see a combination of excessive rainfall coupled with riverine flooding."
"And so you might be saying, well, you're using a lot of words, what does this mean? It just means we will have flooding conditions for longer periods. Because what we call localized flooding from excessive rainfall, that water eventually runs off into the rivers."
"But if the rivers are full, where is it going to go?"
Ronald Gordon, Chief MET Officer
"We had excessive rainfall occurring, especially on Saturday up north. We have several stations, as you know, across the country reporting in real time."
"We had up to, I believe, 12 inches of rainfall in some locations within a very short period of time. So certainly. And then we had an event before that. So we do know that our soils are extremely saturated and certainly with additional rainfall that could lead to flooding."
