Spanish
Hurricane Imelda intensified this Tuesday to category 1 hurricane, after emerging on Sunday as a tropical storm and leaving two dead in Cuba, which will bring rains to North Carolina despite not making landfall in the United States, reported the National Hurricane Center (NHC, in English).
Upon becoming a hurricane, Imelda was 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of the Great Abaco islands in the Bahamas, with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour) and moving northeast at 11 kilometers per hour (7 miles per hour).
Its passage near the United States will bring up to 100 millimeters (4 inches) of precipitation on Tuesday night to the southeastern coast of North Carolina, where "this rain could result in isolated flash and urban flooding," the NHC warned.
Meanwhile, the force of Hurricane Humberto, which decreased to category 2 after reaching level 5 over the weekend, drew Imelda eastward, thus avoiding impacting US territory, but the NHC warned of risks on the coasts.
"Swells and high surf from both Humberto and Imelda are expected to produce dangerous marine conditions and rip currents along much of the U.S. East Coast over the next few days," the center noted.
Humberto was, in the last advisory, 440 kilometers (275 miles) west of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 155 kilometers per hour (100 miles).
In Cuba, in addition to the two deaths, Imelda caused an accumulation of 25 centimeters of rain in Santiago, which caused landslides that cut off 17 communities with more than 24,000 inhabitants, while in the neighboring province of Guantánamo more than 18,000 people evacuated their homes.
So far, there have been nine cyclones this year in the Atlantic: hurricanes Erin, Gabrielle, Humberto, and Imelda, and storms Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, and Fernand, of which Chantal has been the only one to make landfall this year in the United States, where it caused two deaths in July in North Carolina.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted an "above-normal" hurricane season, estimating between 13 and 18 tropical storms, of which between five and nine could become hurricanes.
