Tropical Depression Forms, Forecast to Bring Catastrophic Flood Threat to Northern Honduras

Encouraging trends for Florida into next week as models shift west

Thursday morning satellite of Tropical Depression Nineteen off the northern coast of Honduras. Credit: Colorado State University/CIRA

The disturbance we’ve been tracking through the Caribbean this week was upgraded to Tropical Depression Nineteen Thursday morning off the coast of northern Honduras.

The system is forecast to become Tropical Storm Sara later today.

Soon-to-be Sara is expected to stall or meander slowly westward along the coast of Honduras from today through Sunday, which could bring a prolonged and extreme flood threat to the country’s expansive north coast.

Forecast models are painting an alarming picture through the weekend, with 20 to 40 inches of rain possible across the region, which could lead to life-threatening flooding and mudslides not only in Honduras, but through parts of Belize, El Salvador, eastern Guatemala, and western Nicaragua.

This part of the Caribbean has been ravaged by severe flooding in the recent past, including most notably in late October and early November 1998 when Hurricane Mitch flooded parts of Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua with upwards of 25 to 50 inches of catastrophic rain, causing over 10,000 confirmed deaths, and making it one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record.

How strong future Sara gets will hinge on whether it remains over water this weekend or slides inland, which could weaken its circulation but also worsen the already severe rain and flood threat for Central America.

Big forecast changes and encouraging trends for Florida

As we’ve been cautioning this week in the newsletter, the late fall pattern is prone to bigger forecast flips than what we’re accustomed to in the earlier and typically busier months of the hurricane season. This makes official track error bars much higher later in the season than in the early months, especially for forecasts out beyond 4 or 5 days.

Official NHC forecast track errors by month through 120 hours (5 days) from 2004-2023. Track errors in the last two months of the hurricane season (October-November) are roughly 35% higher than during the first two months of the season (June-July) and 10% higher than during the peak months of the season (August-September). Credit: James Franklin

Over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen big changes in the forecast beyond this weekend and encouraging trends for the Sunshine State. Rather than keeping future Sara over the Caribbean and strengthening it into a powerful hurricane, the models largely move it inland over Central America now, weakening it while swinging what remains of the system through the Yucatán Peninsula by Monday.

Forecast trends since late Monday from the multi-model consensus showing a much wider swing west over Central America and southern Mexico which would prevent the system from strengthening this weekend and weaken the circulation over land before emerging in the south-central Gulf, where conditions shouldn’t favor significant reorganization. Credit: Tomer Burg/University of Oklahoma

A wider turn into the Gulf of Mexico to start next week means not only more time over land to help weaken the circulation but more exposure to dry, continental air and hostile winds that would prevent significant reintensification.

Forecast models from Thursday morning for Tropical Depression Nineteen showing the future storm weakening over Central America and the Yucatán Peninsula into early next week before emerging over the southern Gulf where conditions will be less conducive to reorganization. Credit: cyclonicwx.com

It’s quite possible if the current trends continue that parts of Florida will be dealing with remnants of a storm next week instead of a bonafide tropical threat, though it’s still too soon to completely rule out the latter.

Those in Florida will want to continue to check back on the forecasts in the days ahead but for now the trends are in our camp.

Once we get through this one, we should finally be able to declare an end to the 2024 hurricane season here in Florida.