Remembering Hurricane Mitch in 1998

As Hurricane Eta strengthened to a Category 4 storm today, headed for Nicaragua, my memories flashed back to Hurricane Mitch in 1998, one of the deadliest storms in history.

As Hurricane Eta strengthened to a Category 4 storm today, headed for Nicaragua, my memories flashed back to Hurricane Mitch in 1998, one of the deadliest storms in history.

With the Internet still crawling before it could walk, and other primitive technology, it took days to weeks for the truth to come out that Mitch's incredible rainfall -- as high as 75 inches -- had likely killed at least 10,000 people* as mudslides swept away entire towns in Honduras and Nicaragua.

Could something like that happen again? I'd like to hope not, in this more modern technological time.

Category 5 Mitch remains to this day the 8th most intense storm in the Atlantic, and ranks 5th for highest winds. Thankfully, it weakened to Category 1 at landfall in Honduras, but it turned out it wasn't the winds that Central America had to worry about.

Most Central American countries did not have weather radar in 1998 -- hence the only radar image from the storm was snapped by the U.S. Hurricane Hunters recon plane:

The death toll of over 10,000* was either the #1 or #2 deadliest Atlantic Hurricane, and remains so until this day. According to the original National Hurricane Center report, unofficial rainfall reports were as high as 75 inches, falling at 1-2 feet per day. Rivers swelled to levels never seen before and mudslides carried whole villages away. The NHC declared that "the entire infrastructure of Honduras was destroyed."

In an update to the original 1998 report, issued in 2000, NHC said the highest official rainfall total was 35.89" at Choluteca, Honduras, and stated the death toll as 9,086, with 9,191 still missing. They also revised their statement on Honduras' infrastructure, saying "There was severe damage to the infrastructure of Honduras."

At the time, NASA precipitation-estimating satellites were limited to showing a monthly estimate of rainfall, but later research (somewhat surprisingly) did not show amounts that approached Atlantic record rainfall rates, and scientists concluded:

"The data suggest that extensive damage in Honduras and Nicaragua was accentuated by several factors: the storm struck at the end of the rainy season when the soil was saturated, resulting in catastrophic flooding and landslides; agricultural extension caused by land pressures had left many hillsides denuded; and the population was ill prepared because, before making landfall, it had been predicted that Mitch would move northwards."

Only one precipitation map exists for Hurricane Mitch's rainfall in Central America - and it shows only areas below or above 20 inches.

In 1998, the only geostationary satellite we had to view Hurricane Mitch was GOES-8, and it updated once every 30 minutes. Although NASA generated a 3D view of the storm months after landfall (see above), if you saw a satellite of Hurricane Mitch at its peak intensity, it would have looked more like this:

It was a much different time even in the United States in 1998 -- few cellphones, little Internet. There was no Social Media, and no major websites you'd be familiar with today, with the exception of Yahoo.

Compared to today, there were few websites operating in 1998, no blogs, and media information on hurricanes was very basic. AccuWeather.com had just launched the year prior.

I updated my Central Atlantic Storm Investigators Tropical website (by hand, on a 14.4k modem in front of a terminal), with commentary on what I called "Super Hurricane Mitch" and distilled the important information from the National Hurricane Center statements. Now, for the first time in 20 years, you can see those reports by clicking here:

• Archived CASI Discussions for Super Hurricane Mitch 1998

• How Does Super Hurricane Mitch Stack Up Historically

• What Do We Know About Swan Island?

*About the death toll: Combining numbers from other sources I get a range of 9,000 to 29,000, depending on sources and whether you believe that subsequent missing people also succumbed to the storm. We will never know how many people actually died as a result of the flooding.

Report a Typo