Hurricane Earl was 85 miles (137 kilometers) east-southeast of Belize City, the hurricane center said in its 8 p.m. ET. report.
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Tropical Storm Earl whipped Belize and Mexico’s Caribbean coast with wind and heavy rain, battering cars, disrupting transportation and forcing hundreds into shelters as it moved through Guatemala toward southeastern Mexico on Thursday.
Earl was called late Tuesday morning after a Hurricane Hunter investigation assignment found that an area of low heaviness had formed.
As much as 200mm of rain was expected to fall across the country with a few isolated totals of 400mm.
Quintana Roo’s tourism minister Raul Andrade Angulo said that the 410,000 travelers now visiting the state would be safe because the region has 788 hurricane shelters for more than 280,000 people, including 55 shelters for tourists.
He said the main impact will likely be Belize.
Initially, the eye of the hurricane was projected to pass south of Belize City, but now it was seen to be on a path north of the city, population 60,000.
Hotels along Belize’s coast and the low-lying islands offshore had already pulled in awnings and beach chairs as the rains from the category-1 storm began whipping the coast Wednesday evening.
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.
Earl is expected to move across the southern Yucatan penisula Thursday before moving back over the southern Gulf of Mexico on Friday.
In eastern Honduras, 88 shipwrecked fishermen were rescued in La Mosquitia, while two are still missing, Luis Florentino, deputy chief of emergency agency COPECO, said by telephone.
The storm knocked over a large numbers of trees and utility poles in Honduras, officials say.
The islands’ main airport in Roatan was closed, as were two others near the Caribbean coast on the mainland.
City officials said they were preparing for its arrival. The Belize Tourism Board announced that cruise ship visits had been canceled for this week.
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“We know this is something we’re not going to have to deal with”, Davis said.
