Eta became a tropical typhoon on Saturday morning, which led the National Hurricane Center to include new alerts and warnings on the Florida peninsula.
Tropical Storm Eta is poised to take a toll on Florida due to heavy rain, typhoon storm surge, high winds and damaging backwaters in the coming days.
A tropical typhoon warning is in effect for South Florida from Golden Beach to Chokoloskee, adding Florida Bay; the Florida Keys, from Ocean Reef to Dry Turtles, are also caution.
The east and west coasts of South Florida continue to be guarded by tropical storms, which continued northward at 10 a. m. Saturday EST. East coast surveillance stretches from the southern edge of Brevard-Volusia County and around the peninsula to Englewood on the west coast.
Eta will continue to strengthen as he approaches Cuba and the Cayman Islands, any of which remains a warning of tropical typhoon. Northwest Bahamas is also a tropical typhoon warning, enhanced by the Bahamas government after a typhoon alert in the early hours of Saturday.
A tropical typhoon warning means typhoon situations are expected within 36 hours for the region, unlike a tropical typhoon alert where typhoon situations seem within 48 hours.
At 10:00 EST, Eta about forty-five miles west-southwest of Grand Cayman. The typhoon is heading northeast at 17 mph with sustained maximum winds of 40 mph and higher gusts. Tropical winds with typhoon strength increase up to 60 miles from the middle of Eta.
The center of Eta has been renovated to the northeast, the NHC said, and more reinforcements are expected until Sunday night.
The forecast track shows Eta moving through the northwestern Caribbean Sea and its center reaching the Cayman Islands today. Eta will be close to downtown Cuba from Saturday night through Sunday, and near the Florida Keys or South Florida on Sunday night and Monday.
Meteorologists warn that Eta can lead to potential urban and flash flooding in parts of South Florida and the Bahamas, as well as rains that can have a remote total of 15 inches next Thursday morning.
Jamaica can expect to see between 2 and four more inches of rain, with remote totals of 1 five inches; The Cayman Islands and Cuba are expected to see between five and 10 inches, with remote totals of 2 five inches; and the Bahamas can face up to five to 10 inches, with remote totals of 1. 5 inches, due to Eta.
Eta is still expected to cause life-threatening flooding in parts of Central America, potentially killing more than a hundred people since Wednesday.
Eta made landfall in Nicaragua as a major category four hurricane, but degenerated once its center crossed the mountainous terrain of Central America, causing it to sink into a tropical depression on Wednesday night.
The trajectory of Eta’s forecasts faced previous uncertainties in the week due to the mountainous environment of Central America, resulting in typhoon models with predictions of where Eta would end up after beating the region.
Eta’s tortoise speed messed up serious in Nicaragua on Wednesday, bringing heavy rains and fatal landslides as they flooded eastern and northern neighboring Nicaragua.
Central American governments have been running for other displaced and dead people, and bodies from landslides and floods that have killed dozens of people from Guatemala to Panama.
It will be days before Eta’s true death toll is known: his torrential rains hit economies already strangled by the COVID-19 pandemic, took everything they had little to, and exposed the shortcomings of governments unable to reach out and advocated for foreign aid. .
In Guatemala, the army’s first brigade reached a large landslide on Friday morning in the central mountains where some 150 houses were buried on Thursday, no bodies had yet to be recovered, but said more than a hundred more people would be missing, the army said. At a press conference, President Alejandro Giammattei said he thought there were at least a hundred dead in San Cristobal Verapaz, however he noted that this is not yet confirmed.
“The landscape is confusing in this area,” he said, noting that rescuers were struggling at the site.
The death toll in Honduras rose to at least 21 on Friday, according to local authorities, however, the country’s emergency control firm reported eight.
“We know there are a lot of deaths, we’ve noticed them, however, until we get official information, we may not be able to certify them,” said Marvin Aparicio, head of the agency’s incident command system. hours, we will begin to see, to our regret, dantesque scenes of other discovered people dead “as the waters recede.
The government estimates that more than 1. 6 million have been affected, said bailouts were taking place in San Pedro Sula and La Lima on Friday, but that the wishes were wonderful and resources limited.
“I would say that national capacity has been hit by the magnitude of the effect that we are seeing,” said Maite Matheu, Honduran director of the foreign humanitarian organization CARE, who used her network of contacts in Honduras to identify the most difficult. -Acite spaces and identify their maximum urgent needs.
Eta is the twelfth hurricane of the year. According to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, 3 other entire recorded Atlantic seasons have noted more than 12 hurricanes: the 1969 season saw 12, 2005 saw 15, and 2010 saw 12 Klotzbach also said eta had been joined Hurricane Laura as the most powerful typhoon this season.
This is typhoon number 28 of the year, tying the record for the 2005 season of 28 or more tropical typhoons with typhoon strength.
The NHC is also tracking a giant non-tropical low-voltage formula in the Atlantic at 07:00 EST on Saturday.
Located several hundred kilometers southwest of the Azores, there is a possibility that a formula with subtropical characteristics will form early next week as it slowly moves northeast over the Atlantic. The NHC gives you a 20% chance of fitting a subtropical depression or subtropical typhoon inside the next five days.
If he runs at least 39 mph, his name would be Subtropical Storm Theta.
Editors Joe Mario Pedersen, Garfield Hylton, Richard Tribou, David Harris and Katie Rice contributed to the report, as did the Associated Press.
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