Nicaragua braces for tropical storm 

Source: Reuters

Tropical Storm Ida strengthened off the coast of Nicaragua as heavy rains forced a Caribbean island to evacuate and the Central American nation, fearing devastating mudslides, was put on hurricane watch.
   
Ida, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, dumped rain on northern Nicaragua and around 300 people fled the popular tourist spot Corn Island to wait out the storm in government-run shelters.
   
Dark clouds and rains menaced Managua, Nicaragua's capital, and the US National Hurricane Center said a hurricane watch was in effect for the eastern coast from the town of Bluefields up to the border with Honduras.
   
"A hurricane watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within the watch area, generally within 36 hours," the hurricane centre said.
   
The storm, which is set to hit land early Thursday, had maximum sustained winds of nearly 100 km/hr and could dump up to 64 cms of rain on Nicaragua and eastern Honduras.
   
"These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides," the NHC's forecast said.
   
"A storm surge could raise water levels by as much as 3 feet above ground level along the east coast of Nicaragua, with large and dangerous battering waves."
   
The head of Nicaragua's emergency services network, Ramon Arnesto, said up to 15,000 people along the Caribbean coast could be affected by the storm.
   
Coffee producers, just starting a new harvest, are watching weather developments closely, but say their crops in the mountainous regions near the Honduran border are far from strong coastal winds.

Landslides could wash out roads to coffee farms or heavy rain could knock ripening cherries off trees, said Luis Osorio, technical director at the national coffee council.
   
Tropical storm warnings were in effect for all of eastern Nicaragua, but the government of Colombia said the nearby Caribbean islands of San Andres and Providencia were safe from the storm for now.
   
The NHC's longer-term forecast showed Ida passing over Central America and regaining tropical storm strength by Monday off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

That could take it into the oil and gas-rich Gulf of Mexico.
   
Forecasters said the storm's proximity to land made predicting its long-term path and intensity more difficult than usual.
   
In Mexico, heavy rains in the Gulf of Mexico - unrelated to Ida - have already killed three people in floods and closed two of the country's main crude exporting ports.