Tonight the entire country of Belize is under a Tropical Storm Warning and there is a Hurricane Watch for the entire country.
This is for Tropical Storm Earl, which at 6:00 pm had strengthened to maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour - making it a very strong tropical storm.
The storm is moving westward near 16 miles per hour and the Met Office says that - at this rate - the center of Earl will pass just north of the Honduras Bay Islands Wednesday afternoon, and be very near the coast of Belize late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
So, tonight, Belizeans all over are waiting with apprehension and watching carefully, and here's what you need to know.
The storm is expected to make landfall at or near category one hurricane strength on the coast of Belize. Where exactly? It's too early to tell, but the computer models suggest that the storm is heading right to Belize City, or may veer to the north. Now while you may hear us say that it will be a Tropical Storm or a Category 1 hurricane - and think that it could be worse, this is a very serious matter - we all remember the last Category 1 storm to hit Belize that was Richard in October of 2010, and that storm mashed up the city, and did major damage all the way to Belmopan.
But, the marginally good news is, basically you have 24 hours to prepare. The storm is currently about 395 miles east of Belize City, 370 miles east of San Pedro and 340 miles from Half Moon Caye. Today we went to the MET officer for a forecast and what we should look out for:
Catherine Cumberbatch, Deputy Chief Meteorologist
"This morning the national hurricane center in Miami sent a reconnaissance aircraft into the system and they came up and found the circulation which we were monitoring and we already had spotted the circulation before they had mentioned it to the East of the system we had spotted the circulation and that system with the winds and everything has been upgraded to a tropical storm and is now tropical storm Earl. So now at 10am this morning the position of that system was the tropical storm, Earl, was sent to near latitude 16.3 north or longitude 18.2 west. That would bring it to about 491 miles east of Halfmoon Caye Belize, 527 miles east of san Pedro Ambergris Caye, 534 miles east of Dangriga, 537 east of Belize City, 561 east of Corozal town and 571 east of Punta Gorda Town, all for the country of Belize. Tropical Storm Earl at that time was moving near 22 miles per hour and the forecast track, Earl expected to have a slight decrease in the forward speed. The center of Tropical Storm Earl will move close to the coast of Honduras late tonight and by tomorrow we'll expect that tropical storm Earl should be moving over the Belize and Yucatan peninsula area. with that said, the government of Belize has declared a tropical storm warning for the entire country of Belize and a hurricane watch for the entire country of Belize."
Deputy Met Officer Cumberbatch also discussed what they expect the weather conditions all over the country to look like over the next 36 to 48 hours. She said that the forecasting models are predicting that as early as tomorrow evening, the weather conditions all over should start to deteriorate drastically:
Catherine Cumberbatch, Deputy Chief Meteorologist
"So as you look at in a loop form, this is how the system is expected before it moves over the area. Because of the spiral bands, the whole coast line of Belize from north through to south will be impacted according to this model here. We have a small grid just over on Belize. So as you look at it here, this is by tomorrow evening at 6 o'clock, so you see that the weather will be really deteriorating from around 3 o'clock tomorrow we'll expect conditions. If the system remain at the same speed, this is the conditions of the amount of rainfall that we are expecting in the Belize area here. We expect that the rainfall starts to fall from tomorrow right on through to Thursday. we are going for a total of 12 to 8 inches of rainfall and these rainfalls can cause flood and flashflood in the higher terrain, mudslide possible flooding in the low laying area and so. We are expecting flooding in these amount of rainfall and as I said, gust, we expect the tropical storm force been to expect us. The present track of this system, possible it could be hurricane, possible we could get gust up to the strength of hurricane. Gust, not average wind speed, could reach hurricane strength."
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