Hurricane Otto churned toward the sparsely-populated Caribbean coast border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica yesterday as an unusually strong late-season storm.
Heavy rains from the storm were blamed for three deaths in Panama. Otto was forecast to make landfall yesterday in Nicaragua, just north of the Costa Rican border. Officials in Costa Rica ordered the evacuation of 4,000 people from its Caribbean coast and called off school nationwide for the rest of the week. Heavy rain was already causing flooding in some areas and the president announced that public employees would not have to work yesterday or today. The countryโs National Meteorological Institute noted that a hurricane had never made landfall in Costa Rica since record-keeping began.
Nicaragua also closed schools and was evacuating more than 10,000 people from communities in the stormโs path. Heavy rains were expected to affect the entire country yesterday and today, raising the possibility of flooding and landslides in the interior.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm had regained hurricane strength late Nov. 23 night, with winds of 140 kph, after fluctuating between tropical storm and hurricane status earlier this week.
