Remembering Hurricane Mitch

On this date in 1998, Hurricane Mitch was in the southwestern Caribbean. It passed over Swan Island and turned southwestward toward the Bay Islands off of the Honduran coast. Mitch passed near the island of Guanaja as a Category Four hurricane with top winds of 150 mph.

As the hurricane moved slowly, it interacted with the landmass of Honduras, which caused it to weaken. The central pressure rose 59 millibars in two days. The center of the slow-moving hurricane meandered near the north coast of Honduras from late on the 27th through the 28th, before making landfall during the morning of the 29th.

From the official NHC report: The estimated death toll from Mitch currently stands at 9,086. Fact Sheet #21 from the U.S. Agency for International Development, as of December 1998, compiled the following death totals: Honduras, 5677; Nicaragua, 2,863; Guatemala, 258; El Salvador; 239; Mexico, 9 and 7 in Costa Rica. The death toll also includes 31 fatalities associated with the schooner Fantome. In addition, another 9191 persons were listed as missing. The exact death toll will probably never be known. However, this was one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones in history, ranking below only the 1780 “Great Hurricane” in the lesser Antilles, and comparable to the Galveston hurricane of 1900, and Hurricane Fifi of 1974, the latter also striking Honduras.

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