That and much more is coming up, but while we don’t have a full weather report tonight, Daniel Ortiz spoke to Forecaster Michael Gentle just a few minutes ago for the official forecast of when the storm will hit where:
Michael Gentle - Forecaster, National Met Service
"It's 87 miles east by south of Belize City and its move at about 14 mph so that would give us roughly 6 hours to make landfall along the coast. The original projections were just south of Belize City near where the 2 lagoons are northern and southern lagoon. So the effects of the surge would be felt near where the centre make landfall and to the north of it so Belize City would be in an area where we expect the effects from the surge. Hurricane force winds extend out just a small area however we can expect it to experience tropic storm force winds extending out 150 miles so we can expect tropic storm force winds towards the northern extremity of the country and we can expect it to a lesser extent going south. It would it seem that the extreme south would not get as much wind as the stronger part of the storm to the north and to the east so we expecting the surge and the strongest wind to affect the area near to Belize City where we have the northern and southern lagoon and areas north of that."
"We've been getting banding features with Hurricane Earl; been getting showers and rain off and on. However we not noticing as much thunderstorm on the radar and we are getting some breaks between the bands and as the system moves nearer we will get more continuous rainfall from it and as I mentioned landfall near to midnight so as we go through the course of the night we should see the rains increasing and we should see the winds gradually increasing within the next few hours."
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