The toll of Hurricane Eta in Central America and the Caribbean
The biggest storm of a record-breaking season could lead to a rise in covid-19 cases
IN ONLY ONE previous year, 2005, have meteorologists resorted to the Greek alphabet to name Atlantic storms. They had run through the 21 names starting with the letters of the Roman alphabet (five uncommon letters are not used). With Hurricane Eta this month the storm-namers have reached further into the Greek-letter sequence than ever before. The strongest storm of this year’s season, Eta made landfall on November 3rd in Nicaragua as a category-four hurricane, with gusts of up to 240km (150 miles) per hour. It proceeded to cause havoc across Central America and the Caribbean (see map).
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Greek tragedy”
From the November 14th 2020 edition
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