Florida cities mop up after deluge from Tropical Storm Eta
Published:Tuesday | November 10, 2020 | 9:32 AM
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP) — Tropical Storm Eta was squatting off western Cuba on Tuesday after drifting away from South Florida, where it unleashed a deluge that flooded entire neighbourhoods and filled some homes with rising water.
The 28th named storm of a record hurricane season was the first this year to make landfall in Florida.
And now a 29th named storm has formed over the northern Atlantic: Theta took shape Monday night, eclipsing the record set in 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma struck the Gulf Coast.
After striking Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane and killing more than 100 people from Mexico to Panama, Eta delivered torrential rains to Cuba and South Florida before moving into the Gulf of Mexico.
With no powerful steering winds to guide its way, the storm drifted west again in an unusual reverse S-curve pattern.
By Tuesday morning, it was lingering just north of the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, with top winds of 50 miles per hour.
Forecasters said it would remain nearly stationary through the day before moving north later in the week, but they had little confidence on where it might land again.
Eta continued to swell rivers and flood coastal zones in Cuba.
Some 25,000 people were evacuated with no reports of deaths, but rainfall continued, with total accumulations of up to 25 inches predicted.
There were no reported deaths in Florida, unlike in Central America and Mexico, where the toll was rising.
Nearly a week after Eta crashed ashore in Nicaragua, authorities from Panama to Guatemala have reported more than 100 dead and an even higher number of missing.
Extensive flooding and landslides have affected hundreds of thousands of people in countries already struggling with the economic fallout of the pandemic.
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