And while the storm is forecast to push past Belize in a few hours, we're already experiencing rain from the outer bands.
The met office says rainfall totals of 2 to 6 inches have already been recorded since midday on Thursday, and an additional 4 to 8 inches with locally higher
values are possible through to Sunday.
But, the western Cayo District got four inches in just a few hours yesterday evening - leading to flash floods.
We found out what caused it:
This is Bullet Tree village today. Waters form yesterday's flash floods have receded but its drains are still inundated as the Ministry of Infrastructure tries to clear the culverts.
The flash floods rolled in after 4 inches of rain fell in a few short hours yesterday evening into night.
Ronald Gordon, Chief Met Officer
"Is that the western part of the country where the flooding was reported last night received the highest accumulation. With rainfall totaling to up to about 4 inches. Bullet Tree falls recorded 94.8 mm, 96.6 in Santa Elena and most of this occurred during that time of the heavy rainfall Resulting in flash flooding in those areas."
Those flash floods played out dramatically in Benque Viejo Santa Elena and San Ignacio as well which also got about 4 inches of rain. According to the chief hydrologist it was the accumulated effect of many days of rain:
Tennielle Hendy, Chief Hydrologist
"What we determined happened is that recall earlier this week there was about 14 inches of rainfall that was received in the Maya Mountains in 2 different spurts I can't recall it exactly but that was received overnight and then we received additional rainfall between yesterday and yesterday morning and this morning so what we are seeing is accumulation of these flood waters making their ways down these streams. They will not all come down at once they will come down in waves according to the bank full stage and bank full means that the river cannot take anymore and when it cannot take anymore then it will basically flow over land or travel very rapidly down the system so what we have determined is that you have seen the accumulation and the different flood waves coming down. On Monday it was the Rio Hondo that was flooded and the next subsequent days it was the Guacamallo area in the Maya mountains and then we went back to the Rio Hon at certain points in time so what we are seeing are these different flood ways coming down the river systems according to what the river channel can tolerate and what it can't will spill over and depending on the volume it will then turn into a flash flood."
We'll have more on Sara later on in the news.
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