Hurricane Nana arrives in Belize, weakens to tropical storm

Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Hurricane Nana made landfall in Belize early Thursday, bringing strong winds and rains to the Central American nation.

The storm arrived on the Belize coast as a Category 1 hurricane and quickly weakened to a tropical storm.

In its 4 a.m. advisory, the National Hurricane Center said Nana was 70 miles southwest of Belize City and 35 miles northwest of Monkey River Town. It has maximum sustained winds of 70 mph and was moving southwest at 15 mph.

"On the forecast track, Nana will continue to move inland over Guatemala and extreme southeastern Mexico today and tonight," the NHC said in the advisory.

As Nana pushes inland over Central America, rainfall will ramp up and winds will gradually decrease as the storm unwinds during Thursday and Friday.

There is a remote chance the circulation from Nana survives the trip over the rugged mountains of Central America and reaches the Pacific Ocean.

Should this occur and the system strengthens over the warm waters of the Pacific, it would be assigned a new name based on the list of Eastern Pacific tropical storms.

"While there is a small chance that Nana survives and reaches the Pacific, we feel it is much more likely for the storm to break up over the mountains, due to its small size," AccuWeather's top hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski said.

Nana continued the streak of record-setting early tropical storm formations in 2020. Every storm from Edouard through Nana and most recently Omar all set new early-season marks for their designated letter. In addition, Cristobal also set a new early season mark for the "C" storm. The majority of the old record holders were set during the brutal 2005 hurricane season, which brought Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

This year is likely to continue to set more early formation records, with the next storms on the bubble being Philippe from Sept. 17, 2005, and Rita from Sept. 18, 2005. The next names on the list for 2020 are Paulette and Rene.