Costa Rica could feel ‘indirect’ effects from Hanna

As Costa Rican emergency officials dropped the Yellow Alert they had raised last week for Hurricane Gustav, weather analysts here suggested residents carry big umbrellas this week for the side-effects of the next hurricane of the season, Hanna.

 

Gustav swept the United States’ Gulf Coast yesterday after nearly 2 million people evacuated New Orleans and surrounding cities, though the hurricane weakened and fell short of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina three years ago, the Associated Press reported.

 

The hurricane affected Costa Rica on Thursday, bringing heavy showers, road damage and flooding particularly in the western part of the Central Valley, according to José Joaquín Agüero of the National Meteorology Institute.

 

Agüero said this week Hanna – farther away and less fierce than Gustav – could make itself known with downpours along Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, Central Valley and Northern Zone.

 

As of yesterday afternoon, Hanna was stirring 120-kilometer-per-mile winds off the Bahamas’ easterly island of Mayaguana, Agüero said.

 

Residents in the southeastern United States girded themselves as weather analysts said Hanna by Friday could arrive in Savannah, Georgia, or fall anywhere from the Carolinas down to Florida, the daily Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.