Earl was blowing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (121 km per hour), as it churned about 40 miles east of Belize City (64 km), the NHC said.
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The fifth named tropical storm of the 2016 season, Earl strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane on Wednesday, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Earl continues to move west at 15 miles per hour and is expected to come ashore in Belize early Thursday morning.
Employees of the Caribbean Villas Hotel, in San Pedro on Belize’s Ambergris Caye, pulled in beach chairs and chaise lounges as rain began to fall on the popular beach resort.
Guatemala and Honduras were both under the gun all day Wednesday from whipping winds and rain as tropical storm conditions prevailed there.
Earl is forecast to hit Belize later on Wednesday or early on Thursday, the NHC said.
At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Earl was located near latitude 16.8 North, longitude 85.6 West. Earl is moving toward the west near 14 mph (22 kph), and this general motion is expected to continue with some decrease in forward speed during the next 48 hours.
Meanwhile, Mexico has discontinued all warnings associated with the storm and Belize has replaced its hurricane warning with a tropical storm warning.
The centre is continuing to warn that heavy rains in Belize, northern Guatemala and the central part of the Mexican state of Chiapas “could result in life-threatening flash floods and mudslides”. Some people in nearby Guatemala evacuated low-lying areas on the coast.
The global airport in Belize City was closed, along with archaeological reserves and national parks. Most of the 83 people on board were rescued, but the navy was looking for two missing.
The Mexican authorities took no chances, evacuating 300 families living close to a river along the border with Belize in the southeastern state of Quinta Roo for fear of flooding. Airports in northern Honduras were closed. The Belize Tourism Board announced that cruise ship calls had been canceled for this week.
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“Anything that’s not anchored in, we’ve pulled back and out of the way”, said hotel manager Paul Jewitt, the Associated Press reports.
