Hurricane Beta is just another Hurricane in this very long 2005 Hurricane Season, in fact the season has already run out of names this year and now we have resorted to Greek Names instead. Alpha was the first and now Beta, pronounced "bay-ta" one can only wonder if this Hurricane Beta will be headed to God knows this has been one historic year for Hurricanes indeed. Hurricane Beta has winds of 80 mph and that is expected to increase before it makes shore in the early morning on Sunday. It is already causing much damage and flooding to the island of Provincia. Hurricane Beta will drench all of Nicaragua and Honduras and by the time it is all over some predict rainfall numbers as high as 25 inches. The last major Hurricane to Slam Nicaragua in years past killed 11,000 people. With a low pressure of 989 mb. Hurricane Beta may even intensify before landfall, while dumping 10-15 inches of rain before it makes the coast and it is moving forward at only 4 miles per hour, so the residents will be deluged with rain and flooded out before it gets their. Hurricane Beta will then move into Honduras as it floods Southern Belize, which is still trying to dry out from Hurricane Wilma and Southeastern Guatemala, which was recently flooded killing many people from the remnants of Hurricane Stan. By that time it will be de-intensifying and dissipating as its winds will be downgraded to a Tropical Storm. The center of the storm should be in the middle of Honduras by early Tuesday morning. The scariest thing is that so many have already died in Central America from flooding and massive mudslides from previous storms this season. We must all pray for those folks and hope we do not have a repeat like the storm of years back that killed 11,000 people. Although preventing Hurricanes is difficult if not impossible, in the future it maybe possible to get them to dissipate or perhaps it will soon be possible to steer them. This Hurricane Season has been exceptionally tough on our National Budget and appears to set a record in over 250 Billion needed in rebuilding and clean up. Obviously even our great nation will have a tough time paying that level of cost annually, even though our GDP is the largest in the World. Can natural disasters really bankrupt a country? Sure it has happened before to other nations, but can it bankrupt the greatest nation in the world? The National Weather Service says there is not enough data on Beta to estimate and calculate the devastation and destruction, but the do know that there will be massive flooding as the small bays and inlets in Nicaragua can only take so much pounding. One thing is to be sure this has been one of the worst Hurricane Seasons humankind has ever known. Think on it. |
