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Hurricane Mitch, the ninth hurricane of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season, was one of the most powerful storms of the twentieth century. Mitch will be chiefly remembered not for its winds, however, but for the torrential rainfall, massive flooding, and deadly landslides it produced over a large portion of Central America.

Hurricane Mitch began as a tropical wave that moved across West Africa beginning on October 8, 1998. For the next seven days it moved over the tropical Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea, entering that body of water on the 18th and 19th. Showers and thunderstorms developed at that time, coming to the attention of a United States Air Force Reserve reconnaissance plane patrolling the area. On October 22, the plane reported that the storm had become a tropical depression, a harbinger of the troublesome weather conditions ahead.