Hurricane Gert

Hurricane Gert

Hurricane Gert was a large tropical cyclone that caused extensive flooding and mudslides throughout Central America and Mexico in September 1993. It was the seventh named storm and third hurricane of the annual hurricane season, and the third storm of the 1993 Atlantic hurricane season. Gert’s broad wind circulation produced widespread and heavy rainfall across Central America through September 15–17.

About Hurricane Gert in brief

Summary Hurricane GertHurricane Gert was a large tropical cyclone that caused extensive flooding and mudslides throughout Central America and Mexico in September 1993. Gert originated as a tropical depression from a tropical wave over the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 14. The next day, the cyclone briefly attained tropical storm strength before moving ashore in Nicaragua and proceeding through Honduras. Once over the warm waters of the Bay of Campeche, Gert quickly strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane by September 20. The hurricane made a final landfall on the Gulf Coast of Mexico near Tuxpan, Veracruz, with peak winds of 100 mph. Gert’s broad wind circulation produced widespread and heavy rainfall across Central America through September 15–17. The disaster left swaths of private property, infrastructure, and farmland in complete ruins, amounting to damage costs of more than USD 170 million. In Costa Rica, blustery weather destroyed a national park and led to significant losses in the agricultural and tourism sectors. In Honduras, the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras endured overflowing rivers, engulfing cities, villages, and crops with mud and water. In Mexico, the worst effects in the country were also due to freshwater flooding after an extreme rainfall event in the Huasteca region resulted in water accumulations as high as 31. 41 inches. Tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate as raging floodwaters demolished scores of structures in what was described as the region’s worst disaster in 40 years.

In Nicaragua, the storm’s center remained abutted for nearly two days, abutting the land-bound parts of its large circulation. In the Pacific Ocean, it briefly redeveloped a few strong thunderstorms before dissipating at sea five days later. The storm was the seventh named storm and third hurricane of the annual hurricane season, and the third storm of the 1993 Atlantic hurricane season. It claimed the lives of 116 people and left 16 others missing in Central America, Mexico, and Costa Rica. It was the first hurricane to make landfall in the region since Tropical Storm Bret in September 1992. It is the only storm to have been named by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) during the 1993 Hurricane Season. The NHC determined it was sufficiently strong to be upgraded to a tropical storm on September 14, 1993, and later upgraded it to a hurricane on September 15, 1993. The cyclone retained its status as a cyclone on its journey northwestward on its northwestward journey. It weakened back to a depression just six hours after its landfall in Nicaragua, doing so so doing so doing the additional work of strengthening the storm back to tropical storm status on its westward journey across the terrains of Honduras and Nicaragua. It dissipated at sea as a depression near the state of Nayarit on September 21, where it briefly reinhabited a few strongThunderstorms before it died at sea on September 22.