MIAMI – Ida has been downgraded to a tropical depression, although it is expected to drop heavy rain in parts of eastern Honduras on Friday and could strengthen again when it moves out over the warm waters of the Caribbean.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory at 10:00 a.m. that the depression was moving toward the north at 11 kilometers (7 miles) per hour and was packing maximum sustained winds of 55 kilometers (35 miles) per hour, adding that little change in strength in expected Friday but that Ida is expected to re-strengthen as it moves back out over water.
The NHC said the center of Ida should move across eastern Honduras throughout the day on Friday and soak that region with heavy rain before emerging over the northwestern Caribbean Sea later in the night.
The center of Ida, the ninth storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was located Friday morning some 85 kilometers (55 miles) west of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaragua-Honduras border.
Ida made landfall early Thursday on Nicaragua’s central Caribbean coast as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, authorities in that country said.
The country’s deputy civil defense chief, Lt. Col. Gilberto Narvaez, told Efe that residents were evacuated from fishing villages and other small communities in a thinly populated region of Caribe Sur province.
At the Corn Island tourist center, 800 people were evacuated and at least 40 houses were partially damaged by the storm, according to a preliminary civil defense report.
Government meteorologist Carlos Oporta told Efe that Ida’s eye made landfall between the Caribbean coastal municipalities of Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas shortly before 7 a.m.
The storm caused “destruction” on Corn Island, Mayor Cleaveland Webster told Efe.
The NHC said rainfall associated with Ida may begin to affect eastern portions of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Saturday. EFE
Source:laht.com
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