Tropical storm Lisa, about to be a hurricane

(Reuters) — Tropical Storm Lisa was poised to become a hurricane Tuesday night off the coast of Honduras, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.

At midnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, the cyclone was located about 210 kilometers east-northeast of Roatán Island, the largest of the Islas de la Bahía archipelago, in the Honduran Caribbean, while blowing maximum sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour ( km/h) and moving at 24 km/h to the west.

“Data from a NOAA (National Office of Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) hurricane hunter aircraft found Lisa to be a near-hurricane,” the NHC said.

“Lisa … is forecast to continue to intensify on Wednesday as it approaches Belize,” it added.

On the forecast track, Lisa, which will become a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, will move near or over the Bay Islands early Wednesday before approaching Belize overnight.

After making landfall, the hurricane will rapidly weaken but will continue to dump heavy rain as it passes through southeastern Mexico, home to well-known tourist destinations such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Lisa is estimated to enter the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical depression by the end of the week.