Tropical Storm Richard in Caribbean Off Honduras Is Forecast to Intensify
Honduras issued a hurricane watch and Nicaragua prepared for the deployment of hundreds of troops as Tropical Storm Richard churned over warm Caribbean waters on a track toward the Mexico-Belize border.
Richard, with maximum winds of 40 miles an hour (65 kilometers per hour), is about 140 miles east-northeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios, Nicaragua, near the Honduran border, the National Hurricane Center reported on its website at about 1:45 p.m. East Coast time. It was moving west at 3 mph.
“It does appear as though the environment is becoming more conducive to strengthening,” the center said in a forecast analysis. “Most of the intensity models respond to this by intensifying Richard into a hurricane.”
There is a slight chance that Richard will become a concern for Mexican oil and gas rigs and almost no chance it will threaten U.S. platforms, said Michael Schlacter, chief meteorologist for Weather 2000 Inc. in New York.
The official hurricane center track shows the storm strengthening into a hurricane and then going ashore in Belize early next week. From there, it is likely to weaken as it crosses the Yucatan Peninsula and enters the Bay of Campeche as a tropical depression by midweek.
Track Shifting
Schlacter said the official track is drifting farther south than originally forecast with every update and the storm’s intensity is lagging behind initial estimates. The southerly drift means it could follow a path similar to the one taken by Tropical Storm Matthew, which broke up over Belize, Guatemala and Mexico.
Another scenario is that the storm will be swept off to the northeast, toward western Cuba and Florida, he said.
Even if Richard manages to enter the Gulf of Mexico, it won’t survive north of a line stretching from the southern tip of Florida to southernmost Texas, he said. At this time of year there is violent wind shear above that mark that will tear any system apart, he said, making it “Death Valley” for storms.
“This isn’t August, this isn’t calm high pressure with lovely doldrums across the Gulf of Mexico, this is mid-autumn with vigorous weather systems,” he said. “It becomes a very inhospitable environment for a storm to survive in.”
Season Records
Richard is the 17th named storm making 2010 the sixth-most- active Atlantic hurricane season on records going back to 1851, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the hurricane center in Miami.
The most active season on record was 2005, which had 28 storms with winds of at least 39 mph.
Honduras issued a hurricane watch, meaning winds of at least 74 mph are possible within two days, from its border with Nicaragua to Limon, according to the center. A tropical storm warning also covers the same area, meaning winds of at least 39 mph should be expected within 36 hours.
Authorities began preparing shelters and warned fishermen against setting sail amid the possibility of heavy rain, according to Copeco, Honduras’s emergency response agency. Jamaica’s meteorological service also posted a flash flood warning on its website and said residents of low-lying areas should prepare for evacuation.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared an alert along the Caribbean coast and prepared to deploy 1,500 troops and food rations.
Hard-Hit Areas
Central America has endured one of the worst rainy seasons in decades, with at least 300 deaths across the region in landslides and floods since May.
The rain also triggered an outbreak in Nicaragua of leptospirosis, an infectious disease that strikes the liver and kidneys, Ortega said, and caused a rat population boom that led to 16 deaths in Nicaragua and four in Honduras.
Elsewhere, the hurricane center is tracking two systems that may develop into storms. One, about 1,000 miles east of the Lesser Antilles, has a 10 percent chance of becoming a cyclone in the next two days, according to the center.
The other, 100 miles south of the Cape Verde Islands, has about a 30 percent chance of becoming a storm.
Feltgen said this system “has a very narrow window of opportunity” to become a tropical cyclone. It will move in a few days into an area where strong wind shear will tear at its structure, decreasing its chances of growth.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Blake Schmidt in Granada, Nicaragua at bschmidt16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
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