Tropical depression threatens celebrations

With most Belizean eyes on the upcoming holiday weekend, few of us outside the weather bureau have noticed a disturbance in the Western Caribbean that may quite literally throw some water on our celebrations. At six o’clock this evening tropical depression number nine was located just off the coast of Nicaragua at latitude fourteen point zero, longitude eighty-three point one, or a little over four hundred miles south-east of Belize City. While the depression does not pose a major threat to Belize at this time, a tropical storm watch has been issued for the Central American coast from Bluefields, Nicaragua all the way up to Dangriga in Belize. Maximum sustained winds are currently thirty-five miles per hour, but a bigger problem may be large amounts of rain, certainly for the mountains of Nicaragua and Honduras and perhaps for Belize if the storm re-emerges in the Gulf of Honduras. At this moment, a hurricane hunter aircraft is on its way into the depression to better assess its strength and location. According to the weather bureau, the outer rain bands of the depression could begin to affect Belize as early as Thursday.