Be­lize is­sued trop­i­cal storm warn­ings for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try’s coast on Fri­day as Trop­i­cal Storm Sara stalled in the west­ern Caribbean, dous­ing Hon­duras’ north­ern coast with heavy rain.

Sus­tained rain fell overnight in the Hon­duran city of San Pe­dro Su­la, with no im­me­di­ate sign of se­ri­ous flood­ing.

Sara was fore­cast to drop 10 to 20 inch­es (25 to 50 cen­time­ters) of rain, with up to 30 inch­es in iso­lat­ed ar­eas of north­ern Hon­duras. The heavy rain could lead to life-threat­en­ing flood­ing and land­slides, ac­cord­ing to the Mi­a­mi-based Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter.

The weath­er sys­tem made land­fall late Thurs­day about 105 miles (165 kilo­me­ters) west-north­west of Cabo Gra­cias a Dios, on the Hon­duras-Nicaragua bor­der, the cen­ter re­port­ed. That is near Brus La­gu­na, a vil­lage of about 13,000 in­hab­i­tants. There are few oth­er ar­eas of pop­u­la­tion near­by.

In No­vem­ber 2020, Eta and Io­ta passed through Hon­duras af­ter ini­tial­ly mak­ing land­fall in Nicaragua as pow­er­ful Cat­e­go­ry 4 hur­ri­canes. North­ern Hon­duras caught the worst of the storms with tor­ren­tial rains that set off flood­ing that dis­placed hun­dreds of thou­sands. Eta alone was re­spon­si­ble for as much as 30 inch­es of rain along the north­ern coast.

Sara moved back out in­to the Caribbean overnight and by Fri­day morn­ing was lo­cat­ed just south of the is­land of Roatan, a small-scale tourism des­ti­na­tion.

In its lat­est up­date, the hur­ri­cane cen­ter said the storm was lo­cat­ed about 170 miles (270 kilo­me­ters) south­east of Be­lize City and was mov­ing west at 2 mph (4 kph), with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 50 mph (85 kph).

Sara was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to slow and then pos­si­bly strength­en slight­ly, but re­main rough­ly on that path and threat­en Be­lize’s coast over the week­end.

It is then ex­pect­ed to turn north­west­er­ly to­wards Mex­i­co’s Yu­catan Penin­su­la, though fore­cast­ers said it prob­a­bly won’t reemerge in­to the Gulf af­ter cross­ing the Yu­catan.

“What re­mains of the sys­tem when it emerges in­to the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mex­i­co is not very fa­vor­able for re­de­vel­op­ment,” ac­cord­ing to the hur­ri­cane cen­ter.

Mex­i­can au­thor­i­ties warned that it could cause “in­tense rains” over the re­sort-stud­ded Yu­catan Penin­su­la.

SAN PE­DRO SU­LA, Hon­duras (AP)