Central America Is Still Recovering from Hurricane Mitch
The 1998 hurricane ended a decade of promise, highlighting the need to better prepare for the next climate-related disaster.
This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on the Summit of the Americas Everyone knew Hurricane Mitch would be brutal. Before the Category 5 storm began dumping water on Central America in October 1998 with sustained wind speeds of 180 miles per hour, atmospheric scientists had warned it would be among the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. But no one expected Mitch to slow to a crawl, hovering mercilessly for days on end above Honduras, its arms sucking up water from both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and pouring it back down on the land, catching...
Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.
