Tonight, Tropical Storm Sara is pounding northern Honduras with heavy rains which are likely to produce life threatening mudslides and flash floods.
Belize is watching the storm closely because the forecast track shows the system making landfall in Belize sometime this weekend - most likely Sunday.
The 3:00 pm advisory from NEMO declared the Preliminary Phase of the National Hurricane Plan, meaning that a tropical weather system is expected to make landfall within 72 hours.
That announcement came after the Tropical Depression was upgraded to a Tropical storm at 3:00 pm.
At 6:00 pm, the storm is moving to the west at 10 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. And it's headed for Belize.
The projected forecast projection is for this to come ashore as a Tropical Storm with 50 mile per hour winds.
It's an unprecedented system because in all its recorded history, Belize has never been hit by a storm so late in November.
And because of this, it's a hard storm to predict. This morning, the Chief Met Officer was part of a Zoom Press briefing discussed the variables that give it a wide cone of probabilit
Ronald Gordon, Chief MET Officer
"You can see that from this tracking tool, there is a wide cone of uncertainty with where the center of Tropical Depression 19 would go, extending from southern Belize virtually all the way up to Yucatan."
"all the way to northern Yucatan"
"The forecast is for it to stall north of Honduras for at least 24 to 36 hours, and then eventually begin moving to the northwest into our area."
"So there is a good chance that Belize, a very likely chance that Belize will be impacted by a tropical storm, sometime on Sunday, late Sunday, possibly Monday morning. Timing is also variable because no one can predict exactly when. These models again are not perfect."
"Rainfall. That's what the system is going to produce. So what you're seeing on the screen now is the rainfall accumulation predicted again by a model. So bear in mind that it doesn't have to be that exact value. But what you're seeing these shades of orange into red indicate very high rainfall. And this is from six or midnight last night or this morning to about midnight on Monday. So accumulation over a five day period of about, I would say, upwards of ten inches of rainfall, possibly even higher across parts of Belize."
"Yesterday evening they were projecting it to make landfall with 70 mile per hour wind. It is down now to 50 mile per hour or wind. For context - and I don't like to do this, but I will do it - Tropical Storm Nadine came ashore with 60mph wind. The current prediction is for this to come ashore at 50 mile per hour wind. I will repeat that in terms of the prediction can be off. So we need to bear in mind that the system could come ashore a bit stronger, and if it does come ashore as a 70 mile per hour tropical storm that is only five miles or four miles, actually lower than the threshold for a category one hurricane."
"Yes, there is a very likely chance that the country would be impacted by a tropical system. Currently, we expect it to be a tropical storm. I would not venture into landfall location specifically, but the highest probability is that it would make landfall on the country of Belize and and in terms of timing, this is expected to occur late to Sunday into Monday."
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