Felix became second category 5 hurricane to strike Central America in last two weeks

We were less than two weeks removed from Hurricane Dean when a new tropical cyclone formed in the central Atlantic Ocean six days ago. In the blink of an eye, Hurricane Felix was born during the overnight hours of September 1st as the storm passed through the southern Windward Islands and into the Caribbean Sea over the holiday weekend.

At an amazing rate, Felix rapidly intensified into a dangerous category 5 hurricane within the next 48 hours. Fortunately for people in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, they were spared Felix's wrath. Instead, Felix took a more southern storm track and made landfall in Punta Gorda, Nicaragua (in the Mosquito Coast region just south of the Honduras border) early yesterday morning. At the time of landfall, sustained winds were at 160 miles per hour and a central pressure of 929 millibars. The Weather Channel reported last night that for the first time since weather records have been kept, the Atlantic Basin saw two category 5 hurricanes make landfall in the same year. So remember 2007 for Dean and Felix making history in that regard.

Over a foot of rain has fallen is some areas of Felix's path, including Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Felix has weakened to a tropical depression at this point, but damage from flooding and mudslides will undoubtedly be devastating for the region. The original predicted storm track was to take Felix closer to where Dean struck in Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula region of Mexico. The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore filed reports from Belize City yesterday in anticipation of Felix's arrival, but fortunately for him the storm stayed to his south.

As I watched just a little bit of Hurricane Felix coverage on The Weather Channel (and I mean just a little), the network did not go all out as they have in the previous two years. My best guess would be that this particular storm did not have any impact at all on the United States, so why should they have bothered anyway? For a change, they made the right call here. No overhype, just enough coverage to keep us informed of its track and landfall. I was annoyed at one point during the weekly planner segment when Sharon Resultan gave us a nationwide forecast for the next several days. The master control operators had to stick a "Hurricane Felix coverage continues" graphic on top of the mainstay lower third weather information black bar along with a current satellite/radar pop-up. This really crowded the screen and that had me yelling at the TV for them to remove it.

Felix came at the same time Hurricane Henriette has been wreaking havoc in northwestern Mexico. Henriette has been dumping heavy rain and at least tropical storm winds on the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula and continues to track northward toward the mainland coastline. The hurricane-strength wind field is quite small at a radius of only 15 miles. Unlike Felix, this storm system will affect the southwestern United States with rain from Henriette's remnants later this week.