AccuWeather's Jon Porter monitors a tropical depression brewing in the Caribbean. He expects it to form into Tropical Storm Sara that will bring heavy rain and flooding to Central America and Florida.
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00:00some talking points here now this will become the 18th named a storm of the season interaction with
00:05central america into the weekend will prevent rapid intensification life-threatening flooding
00:11and mudslides in nicaragua honduras and southern guatemala this weekend the main threat now what
00:16we're most uh confident of is the heavy rain threat for parts of florida the wind intensity
00:22and any storm surge depends on the strength of sarah as it moves toward florida all right
00:28with that i want to bring in our chief meteorologist jonathan putty you know john
00:32difficult forecast here lots have changed in the last 24 hours uh when we talked yesterday
00:39and doing with the acu with our ipad here but before we get into that you know you can see
00:44on the satellite despite the interaction with the nicaragua and honduras coastline
00:49tropical depression 19 is certainly getting better organized it sure is and that's the big reason for
00:55the change in our thinking here and some of the updates to our forecast is that the storm has
00:59developed closer to land versus out over the water where it would have more time to gain wind
01:05intensity but even despite being close to land look at how there's a large flare-up of these
01:10reds and yellows that means that these thunderstorms are intensifying and the circulation is better
01:15organizing near the coast of honduras and there's a reason for that when you look at the water vapor
01:20loop i mean you could just see number one the pocket of moisture look at all the dark greens
01:24and john you could see the outline of high pressure look at the wind flow from havana
01:29santa domingo panama city toward guatemala you see that clockwise flow that tells us there's
01:36high pressure aloft that means light wind shear that's right it's in a favorable environment the
01:42only thing it doesn't have working for it is that it's going to be interacting with land and very
01:46close to land but that's why we still can't rule out that this can become a hurricane and even
01:51maybe a more intense hurricane if it stays over the water miles are going to matter in this case
01:56in terms of the wind intensity of the storm but what isn't going to matter there won't be any
02:01difference in the impacts and that's why we're so concerned about catastrophic flooding with
02:05all this moisture laden air this is all very moist saturated air it's going to be drawn up
02:11the mountainous terrain in central america that's why there can be a life-threatening
02:15catastrophic flooding disaster in those areas a real serious situation and there's a reason for
02:21that it's going to be the movement and i made this graphic this morning i call i'm calling it
02:25conflicting steering flows which is really going to slow sarah down friday and into the weekend
02:32the steering winds almost are going to collapse and become very weak for multiple days that means
02:38the storm is only going to slowly meander near the coast of honduras that's very bad news because it
02:45means persistent downpours rain rates at four inches per hour or more over there's going to be
02:52that catastrophic risk for flash flooding all right here's the updated ipath john uh this and
02:57the forecasting team all of our hurricane experts and our long range experts coming together let's
03:03let's go through the ipath here right here's that meandering uh as a tropical storm near the coast
03:09of central america there still will be a turn to the north we've talked about that pathway to the
03:14north now for several days it still opens up into early next week the difference here though is look
03:20at how much time this spends over land so that will reduce the wind intensity of the storm as
03:25it emerges back into the gulf of mexico still think it's going to get slingshotted here toward
03:30florida into mid next week the question is what intensity will it be now regardless of the
03:36intensity john the rain threat is is something that we are fairly confident in right now correct
03:43you can see the copious rain in central america and accuweather local storm max of 50 inches we
03:49don't do that very often that shows you the magnitude of the flooding concern but look at
03:52the rain spreading up and toward florida as we head toward mid next week four to eight inches
03:57of rain in some areas more flooding concerns as it relates to this area and of course what florida
04:03does not need is more tropical storm or hurricane impacts and that's why many people are still
04:08recovering and starting the rebuilding process from previous storms heavy rain and if there were
04:13a more intense storm damaging winds or a storm surge is not what anyone needs all right accuweather
04:20chief meteorologist jonathan porter thanks for joining us here in accuweather early