By The New York Times (Americas) | Created at 2024-09-27 11:58:13 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:18:58
2 days ago
The storm is expected to weaken as it moves along the southwestern coast, but officials warned some states in Mexico to brace for risks of flash flooding and mudslides.
Sept. 27, 2024, 7:54 a.m. ET
Tropical Storm John was set to lash parts of Mexico with more rain on Friday, forecasters said, though it is expected to weaken as it moves along the country’s southwestern coast for a second time this week.
The storm made landfall in southwestern Mexico as a Category 3 hurricane on Monday, battering the state of Guerrero and its resort city of Acapulco. Flash floods unleashed mudslides that killed at least five people and left many others stranded by rising waters.
Its return to land on Friday was expected to bring intense rainfall, strong winds and high waves to the western and southern coastlines of the country, according to Mexico’s meteorological service. The service warned people in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco to take “extreme precautions” and added that there was a risk of landslides and flooding. The storm center, it added, was expected to hit Michoacán on Friday morning.
Source: National Hurricane Center All times on the map are Mexico Central Time. Map shows probabilities of at least 5 percent. The forecast is for up to five days, with that time span starting up to three hours before the reported time that the storm reaches its latest location. Wind speed probability data is not available north of 60.25 degrees north latitude. By William B. Davis, John Keefe and Bea Malsky
Early Friday morning, the storm was about 40 miles off the southwest coastline after being downgraded to a tropical storm, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was moving slowly, the agency said, but was expected to dump 10 to 20 more inches of rain on Guerrero and the neighboring state of Michoacán. It issued a tropical storm warning for the community of Punta Maldonado and the city of Manzanillo.
Though the storm was moving away from Guerrero, the state’s governor, Evelyn Salgado Pineda, said on social media that the state would continue to provide aid and support for the region.
Hitting Mexico as a hurricane this week, John toppled trees, blew off roofs and knocked out power for tens of thousands of people across the region. Airports also shut, and armed forces were deployed to help hard-hit communities. By Tuesday morning, it had dumped more than 10 inches of rain on parts of Guerrero and Oaxaca, two of the country’s poorest states.
John, the 10th named storm to form in the Eastern Pacific in 2024, is moving through the region as an Atlantic storm, Helene, is lashing the continental United States.
The two storms originated from the same parent system, called the Central American gyre, a broad, widespread area of storms across Central America.
A recent study showed that rapid intensification of storms is now twice as likely, at least for Atlantic hurricanes, partially because of human-caused climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels.
