Southwestern Caribbean remains disturbed

The rains continue over Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica today in association with a disturbed area of weather that has persisted all week. The focus today has shifted away from the northern coast of Honduras eastwards, to the ocean areas east of Nicaragua that spawned Hurricane Beta. Wind shear is in the 5-10 knot range over this area, which may allow for some slow tropical development the next few days. Steering currents are pushing things westward at about 10 mph. If a tropical depression does form in this area, it would primarily be a threat to Nicaragua and Honduras.

Some rainfall amounts for the three-day period ending at 7 pm EST Thursday night include:

La Ceiba, Honduras 107 mm (4.2")
Guanaja, Honduras 132 mm (5.2")
Roatan, Honduras 136 mm (5.4")
Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua 59 mm (2.3")
Bocas del Toro, Panama 200 mm (7.9")

There may be some respite from the rains on the north coast of Honduras for the Roatan area today, but the areas of Nicaragua and northeast Honduras hardest hit by Hurricane Beta will continue to suffer periods of heavy rain. This disturbed weather pattern is expected to continue for at least the next four days, seriously aggravating Beta's flooding situation. By the middle of next week, the GFS model is indicating strong westerly winds will invade the Caribbean, creating enough wind shear to put an end to the tropical storm formation threat and reduce the heavy rains over Central America. However, some of the other computer models disagree with this scenario, and maintain the threat of tropical storm formation in the area north of Panama. In any case, the tropical storm threat to the U.S. for the next seven days is very low.

I'll update the situation over the weekend as important changes occur.

Jeff Masters