Waiting For The Terrible News After Hurricane Iota Strikes Nicaragua

Hurricane Iota as a Category 5 yesterday bearing 
down on Nicaragua

 Hurricane Iota slammed into Nicaragua last night with sustained winds of 155 mph, with surely devastating results.  

It had "weakened" from top wind Category 5 wind speeds of 160 mph while the storm was just offshore, but of course that 5 mph decline made absolutely no difference in the devastation. 

Hurricane Iota came ashore just 15 miles from where Category 4 Hurricane Eta hit two weeks ago. Which means the same area was devastated by Category 4 hurricanes in the same month.  The trauma for the people who live in that area must be just awful. 

We don't have details of what exactly is happening in that storm, as it's still raging. Hurricane Iota is smacking into the mountainous terrain in Nicaragua, which means its winds will die down very quickly and mercifully today.

But Iota has to rain itself out in these mountains, already super saturated by Eta.  As a result, the flash flooding and mud slides will be immense, with up to 30 inches of rain expected.

The only saving grace with Iota is it will die over the Nicaraguan mountains.  That's in contrast to Hurricane Eta, which bounced off the mountains back into the southern Gulf of Mexico. Eta then went on to cause extensive flooding days later in Cuba and Florida. 

Not happening this time. 

There's some weird stuff going on with this year's hurricane season. This is the busiest one on record, as we've already established, with 30 named storms.  Believe it or not, there's a chance of another tropical storm next week in the western Caribbean Sea. 

Hurricane Iota was the strongest hurricane of the 2020 season. That's especially strange since the strongest hurricane of any season (usually, but not always) hits near the peak of the season in late August or September. 

Like several hurricanes this season - such as Laura, Delta and Eta - Iota strengthened very rapidly from not much to a monster in a matter of a day or two.  In fact, looking at records that date back roughly a century,  three of the 11 hurricanes in the Atlantic that have strengthened the quickest have occurred in the past month. (That's Delta, Eta and Iota).

Iota was also obviously the strongest November hurricane to strike Nicaragua. The previous record was set by Hurricane Eta a couple weeks ago. 

Many factors contributed to this year's busy and tragic hurricane season.  One important factor was high sea surface temperatures. Those warm waters were made toastier in part due to climate change, so there's certainly evidence that climate change might have made this year's hurricane death and damage toll worse than it otherwise would have been. 

Hurricane Iota Headed Toward Cat 5; Big Blow In Great Lakes, Northeast

Strong winds collapse the wall of this building in Wheeling,,
West Virginia Sunday. Photo via Twitter, @whgbravest

 Wow, it's rare for a hurricane to blow up as fast as Hurricane Iota has as it bears down on Nicaragua.

Overnight, it became a Category 4 monster with top sustained winds of 145 mph.  Worse, and incredibly, there are no signs that its rapid intensification is about to wane. 

There's no upper level winds to interfere with the storm. Intense lightning surrounds the eye, an indication of strengthening. 

Hurricane hunter planes saw the central pressure of the Hurricane Iota drop a full 10 millibars in a little more than an hour. I know I'm getting into the science weeds when I say that, but suffice it to say the National Hurricane Center, not an organization you'd expect much breathlessness from, was pretty damn impressed.

I won't get into a repeat of what I said yesterday, but suffice it to say this will be a terrible humanitarian disaster for Nicaragua, given they were slammed with Hurricane Eta earlier this month too.

This is the first time in the record books that there were two major hurricanes in the Atlantic in November.  This hurricane season really is for the books, and seemingly unending.  A major hurricane is one that achieves Category 3 status or higher, with winds of at least 111 mph.  As you can see, Hurricane Iota certainly exceeds that. 

BIG BLOW LAKES, NORTHEAST

The dynamic storm system in the Northeast and Ontario, Canada was really something, too.  The storm developed a squall line of thunderstorms that ripped from Ohio, through New York and Pennsylvania, and on into New Jersey and southern New England. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center recorded a whopping 465 reports of wind damage with these thunderstorms. A woman in Ohio was killed by a falling tree, according to the Weather Channel.

The strong southwest winds running the length of Lake Erie literally tilted that body of water. On the western end, near Toledo, Ohio, water levels dropped by six feet. But they increased on the other end, at Buffalo, New York by seven feet, causing a lot of lakeshore flooding.

In Ontario, winds gusted to 73 mph in Toronto, causing lots of damage and sending debris flying through downtown as stuff from a high rise construction site blew around. This storm really overperformed. 

Vermont, thankfully, missed the worst of this. We just had some gusty showers come through last night. The highest wind gusts reported in Vermont were 49 mph in Underhill and at the Morrisville-Stowe airport.

As we mentioned yesterday, it will be windy and trending colder today into Wednesday with mountain snow showers around. Highs by Wednesday will only be in the 20s, but will rebound quickly after that to slightly warmer than average highs in the 40s to near 50 by next weekend.