WASHINGTON—Ida strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it approached the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua Thursday and was set to make landfall later in the day, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Heavy rains dumped on Nicaragua's eastern coast and hundreds evacuated from Corn Island, a popular tourist spot.
At 7 a.m. EST center of Hurricane Ida was located about 60 miles north-northeast of Bluefields and about 85 miles south of Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua.
The hurricane was moving toward the northwest at close to 7 mph and, after making landfall, will move across eastern Nicaragua and Honduras during the next couple of days, the center said.
The storm is expected to weaken as it moves over Nicaragua, but heavy rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides.
Coffee producers, just starting a new harvest, are watching weather developments closely, but say their crops in the mountainous regions near the Honduran border are far from strong coastal winds.
Landslides could wash out roads to coffee farms or heavy rain could knock ripening cherries off trees, Luis Osorio, technical director at the national coffee council, said Wednesday.
The NHC's longer-term forecast showed Ida passing over Central America and regaining tropical storm strength by Monday off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. That could take it into the oil and gas-rich Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters said the storm's proximity to land made predicting its long-term path and intensity more difficult than usual.
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