The first tropical storm of the eastern Pacific season is on an unusual, dangerous track toward the Central American coast on Wednesday.
The United States National Hurricane Centre in Miami said that Tropical Storm Adrian could bring torrential rains to much of Central America in the coming days — as much as 50cm in a few isolated mountain areas.
By Wednesday morning, Adrian already had maximum sustained winds of 80kph and it was centred about 475km south-west of the Guatemala-El Salvador coastal border.
Forecasters said there is a chance it could strengthen to hurricane force of 119kph before hitting land.
With Adrian moving toward the north-east at near 13kph, forecasters said its centre could strike the coast by Friday.
”We are concerned, though we hope that Adrian changes direction and drops in intensity,” said Hugo Arevalo, spokesperson for Honduras’s emergency commission, which declared a state of alert on Tuesday evening.
Most Pacific storms tend toward the north-west, marching roughly parallel to the coastline and then edging out to sea or veering inland.
The hurricane centre said that since 1966, only one tropical depression has hit the coasts of Guatemala or El Salvador in May and none have done it so early. The eastern Pacific hurricane season only began on Sunday.
The centre said there is some chance the storm could survive a passage across Central America and emerge, weakened, in the Caribbean as a tropical depression. — Sapa-AP