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| The clouds associated with Wannabe Sara looked much thicker and more organized than this morning, but still not organized enough to be a tropical storm. |
As of late afternoon, we still don't have a well-defined circulation with this thing, so for now, NHC has settled on temporarily giving it the clunky name Potential Tropical Cyclone Nineteen.
If it develops a circulation and increases its sustained winds to at least 39 mph, this mess will be renamed Tropical Storm Sara. That transformation into Sara could happen at any time. I'm guessing tonight or tomorrow morning.
This looks really ominous for Honduras. Wannabe Sara is headed that way, and forecasts indicate it will stall near that nation's coastline Friday and the weekend. So, it'll basically sit there and dump buckets of rain there for days.
One to two feet of rain could easily fall on northern Honduras because of this storm. Needless to say the flooding and landslides if that happens would be catastrophic.
This sort of reminds me of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which caused immense flooding in Honduras and Nicaragua that claimed 11,000 lives. Mitch was much stronger than Sara is expected to become, so let's hope things go much better than they did in 1998.
After its expected big stall, Wannabe Sara is expected to start moving northwestward, probably crossing Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula next week. It could move slowly over land and greatly weaken. Or it could brush the edge of the peninsula and maintain a decent amount of strength.
That has eventual implications for Florida. Uncertain long range forecasts have Wannabe Sara emerging into the Gulf of Mexico and then heading north and east toward Florida. Might not happen, but that's the consensus for now.
The question is, will Sara at that point be a hurricane, or will be a sloppy, weak mess by the time it gets to Florida, if it does.
We'll have to wait and see
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