Hurricane Eta Forecast Triggers Memories of Mitch 22 Years Ago

According to the National Hurricane Center, catastrophic storm surge flooding may occur along the northeast Nicaraguan coast, on the order of what was documented from Hurricane Laura in southwestern Louisiana.

After its Nicaragua landfall, Eta is forecast to move very slowly through Central America much of the rest of this week.

(MORE: Latest Forecast For Eta)

This slow movement over mountainous terrain could trigger catastrophic inland flash flooding and mudslides. Up to 35 inches of rain may fall through Friday in Nicaragua and Honduras, according to the NHC.

Hurricane Mitch's Flooding Killed Thousands

While each hurricane and its impacts are unique, this forecast has some unsettling similarities to one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record.

In late October 1998, Hurricane Mitch exploded into a Category 5 hurricane in just four days in the western Caribbean Sea north of Honduras, holding onto that intensity when it was as close as 60 miles north of the Honduran coast.

Then Mitch slowed down.

Mitch's intensity plunged from Category 5 to Category 1 before its Honduras landfall. But it took two days for Mitch's center to drift south and make that landfall, pummeling the coast and offshore islands with destructive winds, surge, waves and torrential rain.

Eta has the potential to slow down near or just after its landfall and could lash the coast of northeastern Nicaragua Tuesday longer than usual for a landfalling hurricane.

It took another two days for Mitch to then glide westward to the Guatemalan border, and another two days for Mitch to hook through Guatemala then southeastern Mexico as a tropical depression.

This slow forward speed proved catastrophic.

(MORE: Why Forward Speed Matters in Hurricanes)

Mitch stalled for a full day over Guanaja, about 30 miles north of the Honduran coast, devastating the island.

Parts of Honduras picked up over 30 inches of rain, according to the NHC's final report, roughly the same magnitude as the NHC forecast for Eta's rain, as mentioned earlier.

Massive river flooding and mudslides destroyed an estimated 70 to 80 percent of transportation infrastructure in Honduras, according to a report from NOAA. Heavy damage occurred in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

In Nicaragua, damage was considered worse than from a 1972 Managua earthquake. Severe impacts were also felt in parts of Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize.

Entire villages were wiped out by the flooding and mudslides. The number of homes destroyed was in the hundreds of thousands.

weather.com news editor Carmen Molina Tamacas covered Mitch for La Prensa Grafica, a daily newspaper in El Salvador.

"I remember walking with a photographer in the countryside," Molina Tamacas said, referring to El Salvador. "I'm 5 foot 1 inch (tall), and suddenly I had water up to my neck."

"I remember people dragging dead cows in the (river) current to secure food."

Mitch is estimated to have killed more than 9,000 people. A large majority of the deaths from Mitch were in Honduras and Nicaragua, ranking it among the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record.

Mitch was the latest in a long history of particularly deadly Central American tropical storms and hurricanes.

However, there is one key potential difference with Eta.

Mitch eventually was caught by the jet stream in the Gulf of Mexico and whisked quickly into Florida, then off the Southeast coast. Eta is increasingly likely to stall out somewhere in the western Caribbean Sea for several days into next week.

If that occurs close enough to Central America, additional bands of heavy rain are possible next week, on top of the prolific, potentially catastrophic totals already forecast.

There's no guarantee Eta will end up being nearly as deadly as Mitch, but some resemblances are certainly disconcerting.

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