Sun | Oct 26, 2025

Hurricane Iota roars onto Nicaragua as 2nd blow in 2 weeks

Published:Tuesday | November 17, 2020 | 9:34 AM
Locals move on a street barely cleared from the debris of the last storm, before Hurricane Iota makes landfall in La Lima, Honduras, Monday, November 16, 2020. Hurricane Iota rapidly strengthened Monday into a Category 5 storm that is likely to bring catastrophic damage to the same part of Central America already battered by a powerful Hurricane Eta less than two weeks ago. (AP Photo/Delmer Martinez)

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — In a one-two punch, Hurricane Iota roared ashore as a dangerous Category 4 storm along almost exactly the same stretch of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast that was devastated by an equally powerful Hurricane Eta 13 days earlier.

Iota had intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm during the day Monday, but the US National Hurricane Center said it weakened slightly as it neared the coast late Monday and made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 155 miles per hour.  

It hit the coast about 30 miles south of the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, also known as Bilwi.

On Tuesday morning, Iota still carried hurricane force winds as a Category 1 storm, moving inland over northern Nicaragua with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour.

It was 15 miles west-northwest of El Pia, moving westward at 9 miles per hour.

The storm was forecast to cross southern Honduras late Tuesday.

People had hunkered down in Bilwi even before the hurricane arrived, already battered by screeching winds and torrential rains.

Business owner Adán Artola Schultz braced himself in the doorway of his house as strong gusts of wind and rain drover water in torrents down the street.

He watched in amazement as wind ripped away the metal roof structure from a substantial two-story home and blew it away like paper.

“It is like bullets,” he said of the sound of metal structures banging and buckling in the wind.

“This is double destruction,” he said, referring to the damages wrought by Eta just two weeks earlier.

“This is coming in with fury,” said Artola Schultz.

Iota came ashore just 15 miles south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall November 3, also as a Category 4 storm.

Eta’s torrential rains saturated the soil in the region, leaving it prone to new deadly landslides and floods, forecasters warned.

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.