Iota, the 30th named storm of the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season, is “rapidly strengthening” in the Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center said Sunday, and is slated to thrash Central America as a Cat-4 system this week.
The storm is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge along the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 4 p.m. forecast, and islands in the surrounding area will also face a torrent of hurricane and storm surge conditions as early as tonight.
Throughout the upcoming week, heavy rain from Iota will likely cause life-threatening flash flooding across Central America, the forecast said, and Honduras and Nicaragua — recently thrashed by Hurricane Eta — could suffer significant flooding and mudslides.
As of 4 p.m., Iota is carrying maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, data shows, but is forecast to “rapidly intensify into a dangerous major hurricane before landfall in Central America,” the National Hurricane Center wrote on Twitter.
Iota threatens Central America as Theta, the storm that broke the 2005 hurricane season’s record of 28 storms in a single season, dissipates in the eastern Atlantic.
Forecasters and researchers previously predicted an active 2020 hurricane season, and this year’s season got off to a blistering pace, as the Atlantic saw about double the typical number of named storms by early August — something researchers have not seen “in recorded history,” said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dan Kottlowski at the time.
That pace has continued through the height of the hurricane season and into its latter stages.
Because the number of storms this year has exceeded the normal alphabet system used to assign names to the storms, Greek letters are now being used for only the second time in history.
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