Honduras Places 80% of Country on Drought Alert as El Nino Scorches Harvests

Honduras has placed 80% of the country, including the capital Tegucigalpa, on drought alert as an unusually strong El Nino scorches harvests and kills livestock from thirst. El Nino is a weather pattern that warms surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, triggering worldwide shifts in winds, atmospheric pressure and rainfall and pushing up global temperatures overall; this year's event is forecast to be one of the strongest on record.

The measures cover 234 of Honduras's 298 municipalities, hit by low reservoir levels, crop losses and livestock deaths that threaten food security. Tegucigalpa, home to 1.7 million people, tops the list of 75 areas placed under red alert, the maximum risk level. 'Cattle have died, and the cows we still have are thin. The situation is critical; the forecasts are discouraging,' said Francisco Euceda, a cattle rancher in one of the red-alert municipalities. The hardest-hit area is the Central American Dry Corridor, an arid strip spanning parts of Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua that is especially vulnerable to extreme weather.

'This crisis will last until March or April of next year,' Honduran President Nasry Asfura said, announcing emergency measures including new wells, new reservoirs and food deliveries to the most critical areas. The U.N. World Food Programme has estimated that Central America will be the region worst affected by hunger made worse by El Nino, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that El Nino is 'adding fuel to a planet already on fire.'

From Mexico to northern Brazil, roughly 110 million people experienced the hottest July on record, with El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras each breaking their monthly temperature records in both June and July; Peru has separately declared a state of emergency in a third of its cities over El Nino, and in Indonesia, the weather pattern has been blamed for worsening a drought that has fueled one of the region's worst wildfire seasons in years.