THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607280088
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 46 lines
Cesar, grown up into a minimal hurricane, was bearing down on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast Saturday night and expected to come ashore early today.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for the islands of San Andres and Providencia, the entire east coast of Nicaragua and for Honduras east of Limon.
The hurricane passed just south of San Andres Island on Saturday afternoon. At 5 p.m., the center of Cesar was about 140 miles east of Bluefields, Nicaragua.
Cesar - the season's second Atlantic hurricane - was moving west near 16 mph, and that motion was expected to continue, with some fluctuations in forward speed, until landfall early this morning.
Maximum sustained winds were near 80 mph; some additional intensification was expected before landfall. Hurricane-force winds in excess of 74 mph extended up to 30 miles from the center, and tropical storm-force winds of more than 39 mph extended out up to 290 miles.
Forecasters are warning that storm surge pushed up ahead of Cesar may boost tides 7 to 10 feet above normal along the coast of Nicaragua near and north of where the center of the storm comes ashore. To make matters worse, ``breaking waves riding atop the surge could batter structures near the shoreline,'' said meteorologist Jerry D. Jarrell of the National Hurricane Center, in Miami.
Rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches could also cause flooding and mud slides in and near mountainous terrain.
That's apparently what happened in Colombia on Saturday when an avalanche killed two people and buried eight children as they slept in their home in Pueblo Bello, in northern Colombia. Cesar passed over the Colombian coast Thursday and Friday, dumping heavy rains.
Falling rocks killed a teenage boy and swept a farmer to his death. The avalanche also covered a shack where eight children and their parents were sleeping. Only the parents escaped, officials said. The children are listed as missing.
Meanwhile, the hurricane center is tracking a tropical wave that brought heavy rains to the Lesser Antilles on Saturday. The storm is expected to spread into the eastern Caribbean today.
Satellite images showed the system becoming a little better organized, the hurricane center said, and because upper-level winds are forecast to become more favorable for development, the storm is being closely monitored.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE CESAR by CNB