Hurricane Julia swept across Nicaragua on Sunday, lashing the country with winds and torrential rain and bringing potentially life-threatening flash floods and mudslides to much of Central America.
Maximum sustained winds were estimated at 85 miles per hour (140 km/h) when the storm made landfall around 0715 GMT near the Laguna de Perlas area, the country’s weather agency said.
By late morning, the season’s fifth Atlantic hurricane had weakened slightly to a tropical storm with sustained peak winds of nearly 70 miles per hour as it swept west over Nicaragua.
But the US National Hurricane Center warned that Julia – whose center was about 65 miles northeast of the capital Managua at 1500 GMT – is still dealing a blow, not just to Nicaragua but to neighboring countries as well.
“These rains today and Monday could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in Central America,” with dangerous conditions also reaching southern Mexico, the NHC said in its latest advisory.
Julia was scheduled to surface off the Pacific coast Sunday night, then turn northwest to “run parallel to the Pacific coasts of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala this evening and Monday.”
Julia maintains tropical storm strength and is expected to produce five to 10 inches (12.7 to 25.4 centimeters) of rain in Nicaragua and El Salvador, with isolated pockets receiving up to 15 inches.
Hours earlier in Bluefields, Nicaragua, one of the main coastal towns hit by the storm, fishermen had been busy securing their boats while people rushed to buy groceries and withdraw money from ATMs.
Hurricane winds and heavy rains hit the city around midnight, according to AFP photographers, while state media reported ripped off roofs, fallen trees and power outages.
Before reaching Nicaragua, Julia passed a trio of Colombian islands, an environment ministry official told AFP, causing rain and lightning in the north of the country.
Julia was a Category 1 hurricane on the low side of the five-point Saffir-Simpson wind scale as it made landfall in Nicaragua.
Authorities have evacuated around 6,000 people in Laguna de Perlas, the offshore Miskito Keys and other zones.
“We have to prepare with food, plastic, a little bit of everything because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Javier Duarte, a carpenter at Bluefields, told AFP.
The municipality with around 60,000 inhabitants has many weak structures.
Julia’s arrival in Central America comes less than two weeks after deadly Hurricane Ian struck the southeastern US state of Florida in one of the strongest US hurricanes on record.
The Category 4 storm leveled entire neighborhoods on the southwest coast of the Sunshine State. According to US media, more than 100 people were killed.
