People walk past a restaurant damaged in the wake of Hurricane Lidia, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, October 10, 2023.
Christian Ruano | Reuters
Hurricane Lydia made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm Tuesday evening with winds of 140 mph (220 kph) near the resort of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific coast, then moved inland, still as a hurricane. strong.
The US National Hurricane Center said that Lydia’s eye appeared to have reached land near Las Peñitas in the western state of Jalisco. The area is a sparsely populated peninsula.
The hurricane then moved south of Puerto Vallarta to an inland point about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of the resort, and about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of the Jalisco state capital, Guadalajara.
Lydia remained a powerful hurricane even after moving over land, with winds reaching 105 mph (165 kph) late Tuesday. The states of Jalisco and Nayarit reported fallen trees and power lines, in addition to landslides on some highways in the region.
Lydia was moving east-northeast at about 17 mph (28 km/h), and forecasters predicted it could still be a Category 1 hurricane when it approached Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, around midnight.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said on platform
He said the state has 23 shelters open. The Puerto Vallarta city government said a few dozen people had gone to shelters there.
In 2015, Hurricane Patricia, a Category 5 hurricane, also made landfall on the same sparsely populated stretch of coast between the resort town of Puerto Vallarta and the main port of Manzanillo.
Lydia is expected to flood the area with heavy rains, and the hurricane center has warned of the possibility of flash flooding.
The center expected rainfall totals to range from 4 to 8 inches with a local total of 12 inches in some places in Nayarit state, southern parts of Sinaloa state and coastal areas in Jalisco.
Local authorities canceled classes in communities around the coast. The expected impact comes one day after Tropical Storm Max struck the southern Pacific coast, hundreds of miles away, and then dissipated. Rain from Max washed away part of the coastal highway in the southern state of Guerrero.
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