Mexico's 2nd Highest Death Toll From an Atlantic Storm Since 1988: 45 Killed in Earl

Hurricane Earl, reinvigorated to a strong tropical storm with 60 mph winds as it passed over the southernmost portion of Mexico's Bay of Campeche on Friday, August 5, dropped torrential rains in excess of twelve inches over the coastal mountains of Mexico east of Mexico City over the weekend, unleashing flash floods and mudslides that are being blamed for 45 deaths in Mexico. This is an unusually high death toll for Mexico, which prides itself on its excellent civil defense efforts that usually keep hurricane death tolls quite low. According to EM-DAT, the international disaster database, the last Atlantic hurricane to exact a higher death toll than Earl in Mexico was Hurricane Gilbert of 1988, which hit Cozumel and the Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 5 storm, killing 240 people in the nation. The National Hurricane Center, though, gives HUrricane Stan of 2005 a death toll of 80 in Mexico. There have been three Pacific hurricanes since 1988 to have higher death tolls in Mexico--Hurricane Manuel of 2013 (169 killed), Hurricane Pauline of 1997 (220 killed), and Hurricane Ismael of 1995 (105 killed.) Earl made landfall near Belize City, Belize at 2 am EDT Thursday, August 4, 2016 as a Category 1 storm with 80 mph winds, causing over $100 million in damage to agriculture in Belize. Infrastructure in the capital, Belize City, experienced additional heavy damage from Earl's storm surge and winds. Earl also killed thirteen people in the Dominican Republic when the storm was still classified as a tropical wave. Given the high death toll in Mexico and extensive damage in Belize, it is quite possible the name Earl will be retired from the active list of hurricane names next year.


Figure 1. MODIS image of Tropical Storm Earl approaching a second landfall along the Bay of Campeche coast of Mexico at 12:50 pm EDT August 5, 2016. After losing strength and becoming a tropical depression during a long traverse of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Earl became re-invigorated to a tropical storm with 60 mph winds in this image when the storm's center moved over the extreme southern portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Image credit: NASA.


Figure 2. Residents Enriqueta Diaz (R) and Juana Lechuga work with shovels amid the damage caused by a landslide ensuing the passage of Tropical Storm Earl in the community of Xaltepec, Puebla state, eastern Mexico on August 8, 2016. A total of 29 people died in the communities of Xaltepec, Tlaola and Huauchinango in the Mexican state of Puebla after their homes were buried by landslides following heavy rains from Earl, which reached Mexican territory on Thursday as a tropical storm and Saturday was only a remnant low on Saturday. Image credit: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images.


Figure 3. Total rainfall amounts for the period August 6 - 8, 2016 over Mexico. The town of Huauchinango, where 25 people died in mudslides (marked by a black diamond), received 315.2 mm (12.41") of rain. Image credit: Conagua, the Mexican weather service.


Quiet in the Atlantic
NHC is not highlighting any Atlantic tropical weather threat areas in their Tropical Weather Outlook, and none of the reliable models for forecasting tropical cyclone genesis are showing anything developing for the next five days. The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a pattern of increased thunderstorm activity near the Equator that moves around the globe in 30 - 60 days, is currently located in the Western Pacific, where we can expect to see increased typhoon activity over the next week or two. Long-range model runs show that the MJO and an associated area of rising air and surface low pressure in the Western Pacific will continue for the next two weeks, and the models predict that the Northwest Pacific's Tropical Storm Conson will be joined by at least one other named storm next week in the waters a few hundred miles northeast of the Philippines. Compensating sinking air and surface high pressure are expected over the tropical Atlantic, which should result in a relatively quiet period for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic.


Figure 4. Departure from average (at an altitude of 200 mb) of the velocity potential, a good measure of large-scale rising or sinking motions in the atmosphere. Where large scale rising motion occurs (green colors), surface low pressure and storminess typically result. Where large-scale sinking motion occurs (orange colors), surface high pressure and fair weather are favored. This 10-day forecast made at 12Z (8 am EDT) August 10, 2016 valid on August 20, 2016, shows that rising air and storminess associated with the active phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a pattern of increased thunderstorm activity near the Equator that moves around the globe in 30 - 60 days, is expected over the Western Pacific. This will favor increased typhoon activity there. A compensating area of sinking air and surface high pressure is expected over the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, which should suppress hurricane activity there. The forecast was made by the GEFS model, also known as the GFS ensemble model, a collection of 21 runs of the GFS model made using slightly different initial conditions in order to generate an ensemble of possible outcomes. Image credit: Tropical Tidbits.

Our next post will be Friday afternoon at the latest.

Jeff Masters