Tropical Storm Sara forms in the Western Caribbean, threatens Honduras » Yale Climate Connections

Tropical Depression 19, which formed over the near-record warm waters of the Western Caribbean at 4 a.m. EST Thursday, Nov. 14, was upgraded to Tropical Storm Sara just nine hours later. Sara’s formation gives the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season 18 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes. An average season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. As of tonight, the season’s accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index will reach 160 (31% above average), which will officially qualify 2024 as a hyperactive season, according to the definition used by the Colorado State University seasonal forecast group. This is the first time the name Sara been used since it was added to the Atlantic lists in the wake of disastrous Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

As of 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Sara was centered about 50 miles northeast of where the Nicaragua/Honduras border meets the Caribbean. Sara was moving just south of due west at 12 mph with top sustained winds of 40 mph and could make landfall in far northeast Honduras as soon as late Thursday. Over the next several days, Sara is expected to move slowly westward, bringing a widespread 10 to 20 inches of rain in and around northern Honduras, with possibly much higher local amounts and potentially catastrophic flooding. As of 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Trujillo, located on the northeastern coast of Honduras, had recorded a 30-hour rainfall amount of 90.1 mm (3.55 inches).

After a very slow period in August and early September, the Atlantic has produced 11 named storms from Sept. 24 to Nov. 14 – a record-high number for that calendar period, according to Phil Klotzbach (Colorado State University).

Track and intensity forecast for Sara

The large-scale forecast for Sara has become somewhat more confident, but the small-scale details are especially complex. Virtually all of the forecasts from the European and GFS ensemble models as of early Thursday keep Sara moving slowly westward, south of a strong ridge of high pressure, into the coming weekend, then bring it northwest around the edge of the high and across the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico early next week.

Sara’s initial westward track will keep its center close to the northern Honduras coast – perhaps just offshore, or perhaps just onshore at times. Other than land interaction, conditions will be supportive for Sara, with a very moist atmosphere, light to moderate wind shear, and near-record-warm sea surface temperatures and oceanic heat content. Depending on how long the center is over water, Sara could intensify slightly at times, or it could weaken to tropical-depression status. Either way, the sustained interaction with the rugged Honduran landscape should keep Sara from organizing enough to become a strong tropical storm or hurricane. Unfortunately, this slow westward motion near the coast will push immense amounts of moisture into the Honduran mountains, leading to extreme rainfall amounts and a serious potential for devastating flash floods and mudslides.

Ensemble models are now in close agreement on a longer-range track for Sara northward and northeastward from the Yucatan Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico later next week as a weak tropical cyclone. On top of extensive land interaction up to that point, such a track would bring Sara over substantially cooler water and into a much drier airmass, greatly reducing any threat to to the U.S. Gulf Coast. It is likely that Sara (or its remnants) will bring heavy rains of 2-4 inches to portions of Florida on Wednesday.

The latest-in-the-season hurricane to make landfall in the United States was Kate (Category 2 near Mexico Beach, Florida, on Nov. 22, 1985); the Atlantic’s latest hurricane landfall on record was Otto (Category 3 in southeastern Nicaragua on Nov. 24, 2016).

Honduras still recovering from multiple hurricane catastrophes over the last 20-plus years

There are multiple ominous precedents for a late-season tropical cyclone stalling over or near Honduras. This tragic archive includes Hurricane Mitch, which peaked at Category 5 strength in late October 1998 before stalling over Honduras as a decaying tropical storm and dumping colossal amounts of rain, with unofficial local amounts as high as 75 inches. Catastrophic mudslides and flash floods killed more than 11,000 people, including 7,000 in Honduras and 3,800 in Nicaragua, making Mitch the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in more than 200 years. “Hurricane Mitch was more than just a storm. It put an end to a decade of unusual optimism in Central America, an enduring blow from which the region has still not fully recovered – and a cautionary tale for what could happen again in this era of extreme climate change unless societies heed its lessons.” wrote Luis Guillermo Solís in a 2022 retrospective for Americas Quarterly.

More recently, Hurricane Eta made landfall in northern Nicaragua on Nov. 3, 2020, as a Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds. Moving very slowly at landfall, Eta lingered for three days over Central America and the adjacent waters, dropping catastrophic amounts of rainfall in excess of 20 inches. Just two weeks later came Hurricane Iota, which made landfall as a category 4 storm with 155 mph winds in Nicaragua, just 15 miles from where Eta hit. Iota brought torrential rains that inundated flooded regions still struggling to recover from Eta.

According to ReliefWeb, Eta and Iota together were responsible for over 100 deaths and more than $4 billion in damage in the poverty-stricken nation. The two hurricanes damaged or destroyed 110 bridges and 267 roads and wiped out vast areas of productive farmland. Economic activity in northwestern Honduras’ San Pedro Sula Valley, where 60% of Honduras’s GDP comes from, was devastated.

A report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), prepared in 2023 for the UN’s first workshop on loss and damage in the context of the Paris Agreement, found that Eta and Iota directly and indirectly affected 3.9 million people (more than 40% of the Honduran population) and lopped 0.8% off the nation’s gross domestic product in 2020, contributing to that year’s total 8.2% GDP drop, which was largely COVID-related. Only 12% of the nationwide loss and damage from Eta and Iota was covered by the Honduran government, according to the report, leaving an 88% gap in financing.

Migration from Honduras to the U.S. border spiked by an order of magnitude in 2021, the year after Eta and Iota struck. Among the overlapping factors at work, the third most commonly cited (by 46% of migrants) are environmental factors, including hurricanes, droughts, and climate change, according to a 2023 report from Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas.